In working the NYTimes Online forums, she ran across the following post:

"You may have seen this link I posted a while back regarding a possible ghost or wierdo-checker I saw from the 5 Fulton (in San Francisco). Well, it seems someone posted a 'missed connections' about her on a popular local website 'craigslist' which turned up the following--a page right out of Sherwood Anderson practically:

(missed connections) re: You stand in the bushes every day by the corner of Fulton and 14th

'Her name is Amelia Sancore, and she has stood there since May of 1997. In June of '98 I interviewed Amelia for a web site I ran, JohnQPublic.com. Though the web site is no more, the tapes remain, and this week I dug out the tape of that interview.…Below are excerpts from our...conversation…in '98...:

JQP: Amelia, I've seen you here for at least six months, every day guarding the same plot of land. Can you tell me why?

AS: Wow, I can't believe anyone noticed me. ...I'm not here all day you know, just in the mornings, and only sometimes until it gets dark...I lived at that house there (a blue single-family across the street) until the trouble came. We lived there together, Christian and I. He was a real estate broker, and I was his secretary. We lived there for just over 4 years, until he went to London. He should be coming back soon, so I just have to wait. It will be good again.

JQP: What was the trouble that came?

AS: I don't know. Christian was only going to London for the week, and he must have had trouble, I don't know what. But he hasn't come back yet, but he's coming back.

JQP: Are you supposed to meet him here?

AS: Where else would he look for me? That's our house, and I don't want him to come home, and those people tell him he can't live there, and what will he do? How else will he find me? I used to sit on the steps while I waited, but the men always made me leave. Christian will teach them when he comes home. They'll learn some manners when he comes home. I'll be here to see him when he walks up those steps.

JQP: What happened to the house?

AS: Well I really just stopped going in to work when Christian couldn't get back, because if he called he'd call me at home, and I couldn't go to that office knowing he might need me. Then when summer came they made me leave.

JQP: Where do you sleep?

AS: I don't live in the park there. I have a home. I can't tell you where it is. But I'm not crazy, and I'm not one of those people. I just have to wait for Christian.'"

Today she spoke with a woman who works as the arts editor of a local newspaper. She had called the woman to talk about a museum related subject, but before she could bring it up the woman said, "Is that your work on the Cultural Resource Council's website, CSPOT?"

"Yes, it is," she said. She had put up a portfolio on the website to show her support for the local art scene.

"Wow, it's really something. I thought it had to be you, but it wasn't...uh..what I would have expected. I mean, I liked it. I hope it's helping you with your...umm..issues," the woman said.

She ran the statement quickly through her mind. Issues? She wondered what issues the woman was thinking about. Did the woman think her art was some kind of therapy for sexual difficulties she had in her life? Her impulse was to launch into an explanation of her background and process to move the woman's thoughts away from such a strangely personal reading.

"Yeah, thanks," she finally said, "I'm glad you liked it."

She just came off a three-day migraine. During the episode, her sense of smell was heightened and she couldn't focus her eyes on anything. The pain and tension in her shoulders, back, and spine made her long for a muscle relaxer, pain killer, or a valium. Instead all she had was 800 mg of Motrin a day, taken 200 mg at a time. For her, living with a migraine was akin to living in an alternate universe. Now that she was better, it felt like she was just getting back from a long, half-forgotten trip.

She went to the eye doctor on Tuesday and he gave her a new prescription for lenses. Now the world was incredibly focused and she could see all the dirt on her kitchen counters, the peeling paint on the houses in her neighborhood, and the scowls on people's faces as they drove to and from work. She thought perhaps she was better off when everything was a blur, when the hard edges were taken off the world.

She decided that going to the doctor in order to get 20/20 vision was another way that the Western scientific culture forced its unnatural standards of normalcy upon the world. Forcing her eyes to see within the given standards was a way to make her culturally fit. But, maybe she was meant to see indistinctly, so that her internal life could grow in richness and detail.

Yesterday she found out that her cigarette pack-sized edition Fleshyparts will be sold through Art*o*Mat, old cigarette vending machines that have been reconditioned by artist Clark Whittington to sell small artworks in various locations across the U.S. including the Whitney Museum, the New Museum of Contemporary Art and the Cleveland Center for Contemporary Art. She describes Fleshyparts as a "fleshy Polaroid nestled on an intimate pillow.”

Young-Hae Chang's Lotus Blossom blew her away. She thought this piece of web art might wear thin after several viewings, but Lotus Blossom had kept its power with a simple, yet effective mix of text and music.

Two nights ago she had a dream. Her brother had a three-year-old son who was an art prodigy. However, he was being brought up to paint rather naive landscape paintings. She decided to take on his education, to introduce him to the history of art up to contemporary times. Years passed and the boy became a young man. It was time for him to take a final exam--an art project that would be the culmination of all he had learned. As she watched, he sat at a desk, wrote a suicide note, and then slumped over, apparently dead from some drug he had taken earlier. She grieved and blamed herself for the death of this young talent--after all, hadn't it been her insistence on a thorough arts education that had led to this tragedy?

The boy's body was laid out on a sofa when his parents arrived. As they berated her for the death of their son, the boy awoke. He had staged his death as an art performance as the project for his final exam. She was overcome to find him alive and well. The boy laughed at her concern because, as it turned out, she had taught him well.

She was swimming every other day, getting back in shape for the summer. After a hard swim, all of her senses would come alive. The street lights gleaming off the chrome of the parked cars, the sound of a light breeze moving through the pines, and the cold air hitting her warm skin and her damp head all took on a special significance -- a sign that life was good.

As another eight inches of snow fell outside, she dreamed of the warm days of summer. She would go geocaching with friends and have parties in her backyard serving roasted vegetables, personal pizzas, and homemade bread baked in her newly built wood-fired mud oven.

She discovered Jon Haddock's website where she downloaded several works from his screenshot series. The screenshots are drawings made from an isometric perspective in the style of a computer game. Haddock illustrates popular cultural events that have affected him deeply including both historical moments and scenes from movies such as "The Sound of Music;" the assassination of Martin Luther King (Memphis, Tennessee, 1968); Federal agents seize Elian Gonzales (Miami, 2000); Bodies of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman (Brentwood California, 1994); "The Godfather, Part II"; Jack Ruby murders Lee Harvey Oswald (Dallas, 1963); and "Twelve Angry Men."

His site also offered images of his ISPs, internet pornography with the figures removed--hauntingly beautiful works that reminded her of Felix Gonzalez-Torres's billboards of unmade beds.

Today she found more artist screensavers--this time at Francis Graham-Dixon Gallery Online. The site featured screensavers by two London-based artists Rowena Dring and Sophie Smallhorn. She was happy to find them even though she wasn't certain they could replace her favorite, Francis Alys's The Thief.

Her love affair with Flash animation art continued with the Map 50 website. Map 50 is an art project described as a "web-soap set in North East London and played out over 63 episodes." The first seven episodes were launched on February 9, 2001 with seven new episodes uploaded every Friday through April 6, 2001. She enjoyed Christine Molloy's story of an intriguing woman with questionable ethics, existential thoughts mixed with tabloid facts, and lots of time on her hands. Joe Lawlor's use of over 48 surveillance cameras to piece together the movements of a single white female over a 24 hour period made her feel paranoid and a little spooked.

Whenever she flew she prepared herself for death. She wouldn't panic exactly, but she always checked for the closest exit and meditated through take-offs and landings. So she was quite happy to discover www.amigoingdown.com, a website that estimated the chances of dying on any given plane trip.