My strange world....

...is a place of dislocation.

Last Friday night, I heard explosions as I lay in a bed in Munich. I got up, looked out the window, and saw fireworks in the distance. The next night, lying in my bed back home, I heard explosions. They were gunshots: Some wacked-out dude was cruising the streets firing a full-auto pistol out his window.

When the police finally collared him, they found he was some kind of aerospace worker who had lost his job and went over the edge. At his apartment they found 20 additional weapons and 10,000 rounds of ammo.

Ahhh, home, the place "Where The Ghetto Meets The Sea!"

So tonight, I'm sitting here in my office-space, sipping Bushmills and listening to Rammstein in my headphones. It's loud enough to drown out the beer-drinking fool in my building who insists on standing outside for hours while his boombox rattles windows...one week ago tonight, I was drinking beer, listening to people around me rattling away in German and eating spargel....

If I had one of those "my mood" indicators on here, it would be wavering between "woolgathering" and "surly."

I'm all too conscious of how some of what I say here is received by some people. To confess that one is not totally self-sufficient is to confess weakness. Humans, like fish, tend to cut the weak from their schools as they swim along.

Not being weak myself, I do not wish to be seen as weak.

There is, I think, a difference between being weak and being vulnerable.

We've been conditioned in our time -- though I don't buy it -- to reject the "no man is an island" philosophy and instead claim that we "can do it all," without help of any kind. We are conditioned to believe we must weather the storms of life alone, lest others think less of us, lest we see ourselves as somehow lacking.

Yes, there are things we must do alone. It is neither possible nor even desirable to ask others to open every door for us.

But there are voids in life that can only be filled by others, and we ignore that at great peril to our souls.

Just as we ignore the damage we can do to others by concentrating entirely on our own needs.

I freely admit that there is an empty space in my life, one not filled by travel, by my work -- which is of a creative nature and which, if I may toot my own horn, I do rather well -- or by anything I can do on my own. Hobbies, which I also have, don't fill it; neither do my friends, wonderful as they are.

The void is painfully apparent when I unpack my bags after a journey, when I turn off the computer after finishing an article, when the hobbies are packed away and my friends go home.

My need -- the element that will fill the void -- is simply expressed: I need to love, and be loved. Not the love of a place, an object, a job, but a person.

I need a companion, lover, friend.

I need a woman who touches me softly, wordlessly, when I'm tired, who smiles when I succeed, is quietly supportive when I fail, who trusts that I will get up when I fall, who smiles and laughs with me when we are happy, who will take all I can give, and give all she can...I need a woman who sings to me....

I need a woman whose burdens I can lighten, to whom I can bring joy with my attentions, my concern for her happiness. I need a woman whose successes I can share, whose fears I can soothe away.

I know her name. I know what she looks like, sounds like. I know where she is, this magical, adorable woman.

While there may be others who could partially fill the void in my soul, I have met only one in my long life who is the exact fit for the missing piece of the picture puzzle that is me. She exists, this imprefectly perfect goddess, but she is not here.

I am sad, even a bit angry, that the best of me remains unused, unappreciated.

And I am slightly afraid, too. Afraid of a future in which the ultimate gift God has given each of us, the rare and exquisite ability to love and be loved, goes unused.

Call me weak, if you like. I am merely admitting the truth.

In two weeks, I travel again. And yet again, not long after that. In a few months, if all goes well, I'll embark on the longest, most fascinating journey I've yet been offered.

And yet, I worry about one final journey that I do not wish to take alone, one last accomplishment so far denied me. It will, more than anything I have done or will do on my own, define me in my own eyes as a success or failure.

If you find it odd that I am willing to stand naked before you in this manner, willing to risk your ridicule, imagine how I feel having revealed so much more to the one who remains silent, for whom I have risked so much more, the one who knows her worth to me, knows the power she wields over me.

Conversely, If all of this is incomprehensible to you, chalk it up to my excessive indulgence in a good 14 year-old scotch while listening to angry German techno-rock music.