Why wait until Friday to have that bottle of wine in your refrigerator? Why! It's a good question. But I had worries and now I have none. It's reason enough. And I think tomorrow morning, I will still have none: No worries. So don't avoid that wine, you.
Rare form. The end.
Gingerbread houses. Beauty. No beast. Best post ever.
It is still there, two days later, on my right forearm. It's tattooed in the pale skin, the whiteness that never really gets full sunlight, not for an extended period. Faint blue is the mark, like a bruise. It was stamped on. We flooded the bar, pockets of us arriving at different times and by different means. First, myself and two others. Then more. Five dollars at the door and it's dark inside. The floor, sticky, always sticky. There's fake, sugary smoke gusting at regular intervals from boxes in the ceiling and three blank-faced men in shadows, orange light and underwear. Crunchy, chunky music. Grab a drink and don't talk to anyone. The patrons are all watching, always watching—everything, everyone. The bartender, some porn-expat, flips glasses in mid-air, throwing cocky half-grins like a Cocktail Tom Cruise before anyone knew who Tom Cruise really was or could be. Turn away as one of the underwear boys, eyes on nothing in the same way that stage actors are told to focus only on the neon glow of the Exit sign, is inching his lone cloth accessory lower. Someone is mouthing the words to the song. This is Friday night.
More music. My music. And the windows on the car are down. I'm rushing westward on Sunset Boulevard, chasing a tail of traffic, now thin, as it winds through the hills toward the coast. It's afternoon, sun overextended in a way that makes you lazy and honest. There is wind. It moves fast and it's cool, never staying in one place long enough to be warmed. Matt Berninger, lead singer of The National, sings, somehow, in the rhythm of the road. I never use the brakes, just coast. Later, I pull into The Lake Shrine, a 10-acre secret only a quarter mile from the Pacific Ocean. In the basin are swans and alien Koi fish undisturbed, gliding underneath the surface of a too-green spring-fed lake. I like the waterfall and sit for an hour with it at my back; I don't need to look at it to know it is there. Its roar is a volume for sleeping. Alternate between sun and shade, where white confetti-sized flowers silently go to ground. This is Saturday afternoon.
Books my book club has read thus far (if I can remember them all correctly):
February 2007
March 2007
April 2007
May 2007
June 2007
July 2007
August 2007
September 2007
October 2007
November 2007
December 2007
January 2008
February 2008
March 2008
April 2008
May 2008
June 2008
July 2008
The consensus on best books? 2007, people ranked Water for Elephants, Glass Castle and Middlesex pretty high. 2008 (so far), The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.
It's after dark. I'm on my back on my bed. Falling asleep. Outside the city radiates. Inside the wine hums. Before I fall away I wanted to tell you that I
The temperature is high. It hovers in a lazy warm space that isn't altogether uncomfortable, not like this past weekend was uncomfortable, sticky and hushed. The temperature seems like an engulfing thing though, a symbol and blanket sign that our cloudless sky has shape-shifted into summer. I pulled back the latch on the window and banished the shades. The sky is in this room, riding sheets of dusk light that burst repeatedly against the wall, alighting as square and fragmented amber shapes.
Too flowery?
I like these windows here. I am fascinated by light and they bring a lot. I don't understand how the light from the sun is 8 minutes old. I get it, but I don't. If the sun exploded we wouldn't know for 8 minutes; we wouldn't see it for 8 minutes. OK. I'm used to turning the switch on the lamp and it turns on ...immediately. Old light that has been traveling miles and miles (and minutes) to my eyes, what? I guess it's simple. Everything these days is simple while I make it into maths. The obvious is geometry and trigonometry and an equation from that day of Algebra class that I missed. I'll just stare at the shapes on the wall instead. I have a plant in the window, when the sun shifts, on an 8-minute delay to my eyes, the light finds a way to finger in between the leaves, fall through the space in the branches. The movie picture it makes on the wall, I'll watch for hours. Sometimes, the movie is played on the white of the ceiling. The light outside the window, after the sun goes to sleep, plays shows that usher me to bed. Across the room, on my closet door, another paneled production plays out. If I were quiet, still, I think it might play, just so, forever. I like the light from the end of the day most, but there is specialty in the night light.
Yeah, I have an idea for a blog. It's going to be about the light on my wall. I was teased recently about being earnest. I suppose. Writing about light on my wall probably not getting that one down.
I am distracted by these things. I am distracted by lots of things. The light is less of the distraction, but where the time is swallowed when I am distracted. I would very much like to be accomplishing more, feeling whole about that and my efforts, but I am coming up short lately. And I feel tired. I'm fine and okay and maybe wonderful, but also realizing, maybe, that I'm lost. I stare at light on the wall, fill some time with shapes on its surface, daydreaming and not doing. I grow irritated with the constant yip of some unseen teacup dog locked and lonely, alone inside its home. I hear it out the window, its annoying cries that don't cease, and I blame things just like it for why I feel cloudy, unable to do what I'd like. I put in my headphones and the music helps for a minute until I get sidetracked inside it, a paper scrap in a heap of combustible recycling. I am a distracted excuse-maker that has shirked some goals. Feeling sorry for myself tonight instead of actually doing anything about it.
I'm putting myself on blast. I have been called out.
