Sunday, May 5th, 1996
Dear God,
    Yesterday spend a lot of time with my good friend David Ackerman.  We
sung together in Choral Union's performance last night of Honneger's "King
David."  David Rayl was the conductor.  Mr. Warfield was our wonderful
narrator.  Dr. Hasselriis was the voice of Samuel.  And my old friend Sara
Graham was there; got to say hi to her the night before as she was serving
up punch and cookies that Dr. Rayl most graciously provided.  Sara told me
that she was graduating this May; she will continue here and be working on 
a master's degree, I guess in vocal performance.  Am glad for her.  Told
her that I was certain that she would do very well.
    Was thinking that she will certainly do better at nurturing her stu-
dents than I did in nurturing friendship with her.  I was judgmental and
whiny ... perhaps more critical than accepting -- a hard person to be-
friend at that time.  I have regretted many times not having had the wit
(perhaps even the ability) to show the kind of friendship that she really 
needed at that time in her life:  instead of complaining to her about how
unfair it seemed to me that young women (of her genre) typically were to 
guys their age (putting on all that make up and dolling themselves up and
then ignoring most guys who are attracted to them) basing so much 
of their decisions of passion and companionship upon appearance rather 
than upon the inner realities living in potential friends ...  instead of 
complaining like that (feeling sorry for myself), I could have been spending 
more time listening and nurturing, rather than challenging.  More time wil-
ling to empathize with her feelings rather than to do so with my own self-
pity.
    But challenging is the way I operate.  I do not befried merely to 
accept all the behavior that is demonstrated to me by a friend.  And I 
think most people pick up on that lack of acceptance, and quite rightly 
find discomfort in dealing with me, choosing to look elsewhere where they 
can find more comfort and acceptance more readily than I offer it.
    I felt pretty certain that Sara had a bit of a crush on me, at least
for a time, and that, had I had the wit and the ability then, she would
have welcomed my pursuing a significant friendship with her.  But nur-
turing and cultivating, encouraging rather than discouraging, growth
of such relationship, has eluded me all of these years.  It eluded with 
Carol Clark (and conversely, it eluded Carol as well; we both were rather
selfish people in some ways at the time), with Sara, and with others to
whom I have been attracted.  
    Computers.  Computers haven't eluded me, but they haven't had any choice
in the matter.  I push button "A" and the symbol "A" appears on the screen.
I push ALT-TAB and I switch to a different Windows task.  I type CTRL+S
and, depending on the context, my screen stops scrolling or I save a file,
or ... any number of things can happen, depending upon the program living
in and controlling my computer at the time.  Computers are *always* willing
and able to work with me, and *always* under my terms, no matter how ir-
rational those terms are.  I'm not saying that they'll end up useful tools 
to some discernable purpose if I approach a computer irrationally.  I'm
very good at approaching a computer to do nothing more but send a stream
of text across my screen at 300 baud -- not necessarily so I can compre-
hend anything wondrous or learn something new with that text, but so it
can be addictively used to lull me into a hypnotic state of forgetfulness;
forgetfullness that I am the only one there and am feeling lonely and sad.
A wonderful benumbing of the mind is what the computer serves as its pur-
pose then, reading, ever reading, not comprehending, not caring, just reading
for the sake of reading and for the anesthetic effect the periodic motion 
of a cursor moving across the screen at 300 baud has on my brain.
    But I can return to thinking about Sara, about how much I liked her,
about how nice it would be to like her again, especially now that I am
trying to grow more human, warm, caring, and nurturing of a friend.  I am
trying.  I think I could develop a crush ... but what's the point?  I think
developing relationships are much better things to develop than crushes.  
And Sara??  Well, she's probably done quite a bit of growing since I knew
her a couple years ago...  who knows?  "Nothing ventured, nothing gained."

    The wailing song haunts me.  The song from Honneger's "King David" that
goes "Weep for Saul ... Weep for Saul ..." and the haunting chords done by
the orchestra with the dark low registers of the bass clarinet and the bas-
soon.  I was very moved by our performance last night.

    Dear God, here I sit playing a beautiful Genesis song from my Wind and
Wuthering album (ca. 1976).  "Eleventh Earl of Mar," and now my favorite,
"One for the Vine:"  "In his name they could slaughter, in his name they
could die..."

    Spent most of the evening last night with my friend, David A.  Made mom's
spaghetti and invited David over.  Tried inviting Melania and friend over, but
Melania indicated she wasn't up to it.  Tried inviting Jeff Brotemarkle, but 
message I left didn't make it to him until he got back from a 6-hour medita-
tion while I was already eating.  Tried, very briefly, to call Barry Ford,
but when his answering machine answered, I chose not to leave a message.  So
it ended up being just David and I with lots of spaghetti and salad and Coca-
Cola that he provided.

    My letters to you are taking on more of a flavor of diary entries, aren't
they God?  Do you really care to read all of this?  I know my written verbos-
ity seems not much appreciated at work ... and since you are the Lord, the
God of gods, the Lord of lords, therefore so much more important than those
people at work, what makes me think that you would even want to have the time
to read this crap?
    Nevertheless, here it is for you.  :-)  Big deal, huh?
					Your doubting servant,
					David