I am lucky in so many ways, ways I have found myself being grateful for more and more lately, but there are even things like this view from my bedroom window, these ginkgo trees and their full green leaves, bright, holding in the sunshine, making my room glow with their glow. And that, the view, those leaves, seems evidence of whatever it is people claim there is, divinity, love, beauty - that when people talk about such things, it is here when I look close at these leaves, when I wake up these days and the sun is shining bright and the sky is so blue and the leaves are so green and it is there staring me in the face.

The other day, Ben's birthday, there was this part where everyone told why they liked/loved Ben and I was toward the end of this circle. Meaning there was more time for me to fret about what it could be that I would say, how I could say something sincere and true and somehow convey my happiness in his friendship, and trying to think of something to say about my friendship with him led me into thinking about the topic of friendship in more broad terms, and why exactly is was I loved Ben, why it is that I love anybody, what exactly the distinct qualities are (if there are even any) in what it is I seek in a friend, and what is the thing that they see that lets that desired friendship be returned. I am not sure I am any closer to answers to those questions, but I do know that certain people and being in their company has the ability to make me feel at ease and happy and that there are several of these people right now in my life, and seemingly new ones each week or so.

There is my deliberate lack of a job and that is also a major source of happiness these days. When I was in Florida, I was talking to my cousin about my life and she asked me about where I was working and I told her that I was trying to work as little as possible this summer, just enough to get by, that this was going to be a summer of fun for me. And she, correctly, pointed out in her often snide manner that I wasn't in school anymore, that I no longer got summer vacations. And it is true that there is nothing I am taking a vacation from but I love the idea I have had ever since elementary school that there should be something free and full of adventure about summertime, bike rides to friends' houses, going to the pool, walking through the creek, and with the sun shining so bright every morning, I could not fathom having to spend every one of those sunny days, or at the least five out of seven of them, indoors, in an office, stuck. There is that classic rock song, a bit hair metal, with the chorus, "School's out for summer, school's out forever!" And that sentiment, though, yes, I am no longer in school, still holds sway in my mind.

Yesterday, in this spirit, I biked to the West Village to use the gym and a beautiful bike ride it was. In the showers afterward, I saw these two really beautiful looking men take their sweet time soaping themselves up and I got pretty turned on. I then got some coffee and fruit and went and laid out on the Christopher Street Piers, sunbathed with all the other homos in their underwear, and read from The New Yorker. And the ability to do that, to have such amazingly lovely days outside, is what I want to be able to continue to do all summer. The day culminated with watching the sun set with a friend over the East River, eating dinner at my house, and falling asleep to Old Joy. And today, I am going to a reading Bruce is participating in, which should be lovely and interesting and then there is a friend's birthday at a gay bar, and these days are one after the next, the fun neverending.

There is a lot going on. There are good things and bad things. A friend has cancer. Adele is moving out. Coco might possibly move in. I am going to Miami for the second week of June. I am brainstorming when I can go to other places I really want to go to, London and the Bay Area.

It might be because I am listening to the Beatles right now circa Sgt. Pepper's that I am feeling so full of love and joy, that everything seems to contain beauty and love. It could be because of that, or it could be because of the weather, or rather than trying to justify these thoughts, to seek causation where none is needed, it could just be because that is true, correct, that the world is so lovely and things are so beautiful.