The latest installment in getting what you need in disguise:

There's this woman. Beautiful, talented, intelligent, empathetic, humble. I've been very interested for a little while, but we work together. That doesn't break the deal, but I haven't done enough theatre work to be jaded to the point of not believing the show is sacred, so I have proceeded with utmost caution... so much caution that I was sure that I'd screwed myself out of any chance with her. Then, in an evening and a day I went from boundless optimism to overwhelming suspicion that I'd fucked up yet another potential good thing.

So I woke with a heavy heart this morning.

I rose early to walk in a 5k benefiting suicide prevention, so I was most aware of the hole in my heart where King used to live on this earth. He's been in my thoughts more than usual this week. A younger brother dying in the novel I'm reading brought his memory to the fore. For the first time in my grief, it became important for me to know the specific details of the method of his death, which Eric provided. Saturday morning I talked with my mother about how her grief's hitting her these days. I miss him like hell every day.

On my way out of the hotel, I checked my email and found that the town in Guatemala where my friends and I worked this summer was devastated by mudslides. The hospital at which we did our construction work is partially submerged in mud and one of the villages next to it is gone. We are told that all of the kids in the special needs class with whom we worked are alive, but I have to believe that some of the others we met that week are not. Knowing that the poor people of these villages now have been further burdened broke my heart and I spent much of the walk crying for them.

...but

it was a beautiful walk and I made it with My Morning Jacket's sublime new album "Z" in my ears. I ended recommitted to my beliefs that in the middle of all our stumbles, fuck-ups and heartbreaks (not in spite of them), life is beautiful and this world is an awe-inspiring place. I am happy that in a half hour last night, I taught someone more than they'd learned in a year of piano lessons. I will have written some great songs before I leave this city for home and I will return to Guatemala again to help those in need. I will rock six days a week for the next month and be paid well. I am lucky.