life is with people

how would you live if you were alone?

is there any difference between my answer to this question, and how I live now?

what distinguishes the occasional day where I feel interested in what clothes I put on, feel like cleaning the apartment?
I have been looking for a while for a way to say something about this, I say something about how wanting to be presentable, to have a clean home, has to do with society, civilization. feeling part of.
maybe: on those days, I feel like there are other people-
with me.
in the world.
in my world.
from whom I want something. ah. want as the ground of with.

today, most days, what do I want from anyone? and so, what interest in 'preparing a face to greet / the faces that you meet'?

Didion on self-respect: To assign unanswered letters their proper weight [yes], to free us from the expectations of others [yes], to give us back to ourselves [please] -- there lies the great, the singular power of self-respect [integrity, or what you may call my belligerence?]. Without it, one eventually discovers the final turn of the screw [terror]: one runs away [yes I will - stop.] to find oneself, and finds no one at home. posted to katecutrer @ 8:26 AM 15 Nov 05

and what of the great, the singular power of desire?
having given myself back to myself, having assigned to unanswered letters and expectations of others little weight -- too little? better to have others whose opinions do very much matter, in whom to find a theatre for action?
otherwise- rest without activity, day like wide water.

-to be not engrossed, I want other people with me - 2/17 below
-hold [an mage of myself] in the mind of someone I love:"the theatre of all my actions "- 2/21 below

to separate themselves from the City of the Destruction

We can throughout American history find select and separatist groups who looked to a phrophetic individual claiming divine revelation, in a setting that repudiated conventional assumptions about property, family life, and sexuality.
They were marginal groups, peculiar people, people set apart from the world: the Shakers and the Ephrata community, the communes of Oneida and Amana, the followers of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young.

Philip Jenkins, Mystics and Messiahs
quoted by Krakauer, page 9, Under the Banner of Heaven.