interstitial

[parental guidance advised]

My editor has been meeting with my agent about some changes that may be required and / or requested in my forthcoming book, and I'm not sure how I feel about it. Starting with the title. The title! They say a title is as much about advertising and public relations as it is about the aesthetic ideals of the author, to which I say, bullshit.

The title is the title, and I wrote the book, not some goddamned advertising executive or fucking public relations agent, and if I say the title is Memoirs, Revisited, then Memoirs, Revisited it is. There's the homage to Evelyn Waugh in there, and that's pretty damn important, I don't give a rat's ass if Waugh is considered totally inappropriate in this culture of post-Colonial-Marxist-fucking-queer theory that is all anyone wants to read these days. The title could maybe -- and this is a serious maybe -- be slightly altered, perhaps to Memoirs, Revised, or, for the American market, if that comma and word order is too complicated for the ten second mind span that is all that's out there, and if there's a hefty inconvenience fee that is in addition to my royalties, then maybe we can discuss Revised Memoirs.

There's just not a chance that I'm even willing to think about those pansy washed out suburban landscapes in pastel hues with Notes From My Childhood in a totally patronizing girly script, especially not with a little heart dotting the i. Yeah, I know, the mock-ups showed how easily that cover could incorporate the Oprah Book Club logo and the Now A Major Motion Picture logo and the little statuette for every freaking literary award there is, but I don't give a damn.

Oprah can choose a book with a vaguely intellectual title, it will be a bit of mental titillation to break her followers out of their He's Just Not That Into You rut, because, hey, women, get over it! You're just not that attractive and not that interesting and why should he have ever looked twice at you to begin with? I mean, buy a three way full length mirror and take a look at yourself. Those women are never going to appreciate the subtle wordplay and theoretical by-play of my genius, and it isn't worth wasting either trees or recycled newspapers to put my work in their hands. There are other, better ways to sell a book.

Like the film rights. I know some scriptwriter is going to take a chainsaw to Memoirs, Revisited and add some significant heavy scenes of sex, drugs, and violence that are only delicately alluded to in the text. I know this is the way Hollywood works, this is the system that we've all sold out to, that they're buying the rights to change the title, the plot, and the dialogue, but that's exactly why I want a watertight contract with the film agency, where not only am I paid a significant lump sum at the signing, but also earn a percentage of the gross and have final say on the screenplay.

There's not a chance in hell that I'm willing to let my lightly fictionalized memoir be turned into one of those disgusting improvised mumblecore low budget gross-fests. Judd Apatow can take his offer and shove it right up his pretty ass. This work needs to go to a serious director who understands the passions and the quirks of the human heart, a director who has seen the world and lived to tell the tale, a director with the ability to feel each and every nuance of a scene and portray that soul searing earnestness in the most delicate way possible.

Maybe he doesn't exist, maybe we need to go to Sundance or Cannes or Toronto and feel out some of these more obscure, deeper minds, those that haven't sold out to the Hollywood blockbuster machine yet, that still have a freshness of vision and an ear for the words unspoken at moments of deep anguish and passion. So we can write out the contract for the film rights, but I won't be budging on choosing a production house until we've committed to doing some research of the up and coming film producers.

And that doesn't even begin to get into the advance copy nightmare situation. I had hoped to be able to avoid revealing this -- it certainly is only a quickly passing scene in Memoirs, Revisited, and it may have even been one of those scenes that that sorry sack of shit editor tried to slash from the manuscript, not realizing how necessary it is to the text, how it is the entire lynch pin that holds the various strands together, but editor's can't be expected to see the underlying shimmers of meaning and metaphor for the scenes that describe such repressed emotion and misery.

But it looks like now I'm going to have to spell it out, because god forbid the advance copies not go to absolutely the most vaunted names in reviewing and criticism today, but which it is understood that some intern who isn't being paid minimum wage and was only hired because she's the daughter of the chairman of the board of the holding company that owns the goddamned newspaper, but even after we send these interns gift certificates in obscene amounts and get my book and a two hundred word synopsis, yes I'm working on that, as we speak, on the editor's fucking desk, well, there might be some problems getting certain editors to even consider writing critical acclaim for this particular book, unless I use a pseudonym, which seems a step too far for a fictionalized autobiography.

I have put some serious thought into using the blackmail approach to get around this particular obstacle, and the detective agencies will be sending their bills directly to the publisher, but nothing doing. Not that there isn't plenty of dope, but I've decided to use it as preliminary research and material for my next book, for which you may pay the customary advance in the usual way. But since I can't both be using exposure of certain delicate personal matters as a threat and then publish them anyway, I'm trying to see how to get around the rocky past of my infidelities in the literary world.

Unfortunately there's no evidence of my moments of weakness, so I can't use their wall of silence to create a media frenzy, although that isn't a bad idea. I'll fabricate some racy emails and we can let this story hit the fan when the news cycle is slow, that'll boost sales the way only banning by the Catholic church can inflate readership.

But none of this even touches on the worst aspect of the matter. It isn't just that one key scene that the editor wants to cut, but the publishers have the temerity to have a list, with bullet points, of aspects that should be expanded and / or inserted to expand the readership's reach and meet certain core demographic goals. Seriously, they're taking an honest portrayal of the demands and horrors of a life passionately lived, and telling me that it doesn't fully engage specific market elements.

To wit, they have requested: a heart-wrenching scene of emotional cleansing and purity of love using a touchingly precocious orphan, preferably between the ages of four and seven; a mentor from my fifth grade year, either a music or a math teacher, to whom I turn for advice at a crucial stage in my development; a gay best friend with a catty but warm personality; a doctor flummoxed by my medical history, who discovers, almost too late, that I am a passive carrier of tuberculosis, which then necessitates a recovery in Mexico or the Caribbean where I meet a grandmotherly font of sage advice and take a lover, with no expectations for a future together.

Did that fucked up editor not even read Chapter 24, when my hopes were shattered when the Frenchman who inspired such joy and rapture divorced me as soon as his green card arrived, which led to Chapter 25, my homage to Kafka, as I tried to report him to the Immigration officials, but he was able to use my own medical history against me, and not only have charges of illegal immigration and immediate deportation dropped, but was then able to have a restraining order filed against me. Me! Me who married him and brought him to the country of his dreams, then was abandoned like last week's baguette.

And then this smug editor wants me to embark on a Caribbean affair with that type of emotional cultural baggage? If she had even read the book she would understand why I exclusively date Ivy League football coaches and suburban dentists. Then to take out my indictment of the meat industry, which robs the book of the narrative closure, how veganism cured my ravaged soul; there's just no way the text even holds together without the description of the abattoir, à la Upton Sinclair, and I can't leave out such a keystone.

So I'm thinking of firing this editor and my agent and starting over, taking advantage of the self publishing boom. I've already deposited the advance, of course, but they're the ones who have broken their contract, no me, and an artist can only make so many compromises before they become a whore, and that's just a line I can't cross.

---

weather
the heavy hum of thunderstorms

reading
back catalog of Europa Editions. What a find!

late night words

I didn't expect the hippopotamus. It is one of those beasts whom the World Book Encyclopedia described in terms not of safari magic and possibility, but in the driest of biological taxonomy. For a sense of the majesty of the hippopotamus, I would have had to refer to the works of Kipling, or the color photograph spreads of the uncivilized world in National Geographic, but as our library had neither Kipling's stories nor back issues of adventure magazines, the concept of the hippo had no preconceived or romanticized appeal for me.

It was just a foreign beast, like all the other foreign beasts that I was expected to study with scientific focus and fervor, to manifest a passion which I had never possessed. The elephants, the tigers, the monkey, the thousands of gazelles, the snake house: this panoply of storybook animals I had been exposed to, but still preferred in their illustrated form, faces animated by resentment, fear, or ferocity, glinting with a savage intelligence. Here were those very animals, but washed out, pale imitations, lacking any of the spark of their fictitious counterparts. They seemed ill, or drugged, or weary, or simply vacant, no more animated than a bearskin rug or a mounted deer head.

The hippopotamus, though, was strikingly different. Perhaps it was newer, or younger, but to my eye none of the reasons for the lackluster appearance of the animals would have reflected a too long life in captivity. Rather, what I saw was a jaw of indescribable size yawning open, wider and wider, wide enough to accommodate my baby brother and myself and even our little dog Fritz, even though we had left the little dog at home, in accordance with our uncle's wishes for this outing. That wide open mouth was filled with teeth the size of billiard balls, colored the off-white of wild beasts but not yet darkened by age, and within the cavernous mouth was a tongue that was as menacing as the teeth.

Just saying the word hippopotamus never inspired fear: in fact, we would giggle and laugh, hippo hippo hippo, like Scottie dog Scottie dog or horseradish or Beelzebub. But just as horseradish was not as yummy to eat as it was to say, and as grandmama had strictly forbid our laughing chants of Beelzebub Beelzebub, hippopotamus was a lot more scary than it was to say out loud. It was more like a crocodile, something I knew wasn't ever going to be any fun to play fetch with or teach to ride in the paddock, those rows of teeth and a body that looked clumsy but could move super-fast.

Standing there, terrified, in front of the hippo, I started to shake, and then to cry, and then to sob, and hiccup noisily, and I ran, terrified, back towards where we had eaten our sandwiches, under an umbrella on a patio overlooking the flamingos. My uncle must have called after me, but hampered as he was with my baby brother and with no sense of what to do with a terrified child, he took his time chasing after me, and I realized at some point that I had lost my bearings.

This was exactly where the flamingos were supposed to be, and they weren't. This is where the patio, and the tables and umbrellas and the man in a striped apron selling flavored ices were supposed to be, but they weren't. Oh, I was still in the zoo, but instead of shocking pink birds that stood incongruously and gracefully under the pine trees, there was a pool with penguins, and instead of the dining area there was a fenced off grassy meadow, without any animal immediately visible.

I was distracted by the diving and swimming of the torpedo shaped penguins, and stopped crying and hiccuping, but there were no other grown ups around to find me and return me to my uncle, and so I looked at the penguins and tried to decide what to do. I was not an explorer, I had no desire to model myself on Dr. Livingstone and come face to face with the birds and beasts of the jungle and the savannah. I did not particularly even like the zoo, found the animals uninspiring rather than a source of exotic amusement, and more than anything else I was terrified of seeing the hippo again, that too large beast that looked like a dinosaur remnant, and I had no idea which direction it was safe to walk in, or would take me where I hoped to go.

The afternoon was growing colder, and the penguins were not, after all, really all that interesting, so I put my hands firmly in my pockets and walked onward, carefully looking for other paths or signs or directions or a map or someone to ask for help. It was as if the zoo had suddenly been closed, during the time of my escape from the hippo and watching of the penguins, and every person who had been there had left and taken their families and ice cream carts with them.

I passed animals that we hadn't seen earlier, dingos and duck-billed platypus and koala bears and hyenas and a giant tortoise that was the size of a pony, and then there were aviaries filled with birds more magnificent than our peacocks. The bird song I could almost hear as human speech, but the speech of someone very foreign trying very hard to speak English, the way I knew I was supposed to answer a question about my school or to pass the sugar, but without actually knowing which response would answer the request. The bird talk was the same way, they sounded like words without being words, or they were words that I didn't know where started or ended and the accent was too confusing to understand.

I listened to the birds for a long time, and then I realized that it was starting to get dark and I didn't know how to get out and maybe they would make the police open up the zoo to come find me in time for dinner, or if it was too late for dinner then at least I could sleep in my bed by my brother in the room we shared at the top of the landing, the nightlight keeping at bay the mysteries and monsters of the dark.

Here, though, I would have to find a bench, maybe, under a tree, or perhaps the snake house wasn't kept locked at night, so if I could find the snakes I could sleep inside, and a zookeeper would be bound to find me in the morning. But I was terrified of trying to sleep under the poisonous fangs of pythons and rattlesnakes and water moccasins and didn't want to be suffocated by boa constrictors, so I did not actually want to find the snake house, and I couldn't.

In the darkening light the animals were becoming more awake, making more noise, and even when I wasn't sure what I was looking at, for the moon was the tiniest fingernail-sliver in the sky, not even as large as an apple slice, so while I couldn't see the bears or the wildebeests or the yaks or the zebra, I could hear loud snuffling and twigs breaking as animals paced or tried to trot or gallop, and there were noises like barking or chattering or the bellow of a train whistle before it reaches town. I couldn't make out the path very well, but I assumed that at least I couldn't accidentally enter any of the cages or exhibits, and I was about to just sit down exactly where I was, in spite of the hurrying scurrying chattering sounds that were all around me, when I spied the boy.

He wasn't that far away, but I couldn't see him very well, he was scruffy and dirty and the night was dark, but he was about my age and he didn't look hostile or scary. I continued to walk towards him, and, when we were next to each other, he looked at me, and shrugged, and turned and walked away. He hadn't indicated that I could follow him, but he hadn't said no, so I stayed a step or two back, and hoped that he wasn't going to kidnap me or sell me as a slave or use me as lion bait, although I knew that I wasn't strong enough or brave enough to fight him if he did want to do any of those things.

After we had walked and walked and walked for what seemed like hours, I didn't think we could even be in the zoo anymore, but the animal noises grew louder and closer, and I realized the path we were walking on was no longer pavement, but a rough track, covered in leaves in some places and with unexpected stones in others. I didn't want to follow him anymore, but didn't know what else to do or how to find my way back to the paved sidewalk, and just when I had screwed up my courage to ask him where we were going, up ahead I saw a bonfire, or a campfire, and around it what looked like a family, or at least other people.

There wasn't any smell of cooking dinner, although I reminded myself that the fire would at least be warm and would keep away wild animals, and I wiped away my tears and tried to be ready to introduce myself to these strangers, who were to become my family in the years ahead.

---

reading
The city & the city / China Miéville

weather
wind! wind! wind!

patience

Sitting in the room, the walls obscured by dusk, the chair illuminated by the lamp, a mug of tea grown cold and a novel forgotten on the table. There are other novels that could be read, the text searched for the hook of meaning and motion that grabs at the mind and won't let go, but the forgotten novel holds its place firmly against competition, even though it is not particularly compelling or well written. It is, in the semi-darkened room, the object most notable, for being put aside.

The room, until quite recently, was filled with guests, three or four who had overstayed their welcome, putting off this moment of unscheduled quiet, where the only noise is the turning of pages and the setting down of the tea, where instead of the brightly animated faces of conversation there is the quiet beacon of the lamp. The novel, though, is forgotten; the guests are forgotten; the clutter that remains in the next room over does not spill into this flat calm, where there is no danger of pointed wit and no fear of untimely information revealed.

The foundations settle into place, the windows rattle, gently, in the breeze of a distant storm, the moon rises. And still: seated quite motionless in the chair, staring into the middle distance, waiting patiently for dawn to arrive. It is not that dawn brings with it expectations of couriers with messages of riches or successful campaigns, there is no anticipation of immediate visitors or likely intrusions by small children or relatives or lost loves. Dawn, when it arrives, will accompany only the knowledge that time has passed, and that whatever trials or traumas, however likely or impossible or inexplicable, have once more been vanquished.

Nights were not always about keeping the vigil: there was a time, oh, so many years ago now, when she could remember different routines. There were childhood routines of brushed teeth and neatly braided hair and prayers, there were adolescent routines of frantic late night phone calls and textbooks held open in final study sessions before examinations, there were adult routines of locked doors and closed windows and washed dishes. It was not that any one set of routines was ever established or broken, but in fits and starts, elements of them began to crumble and evolve into ever more labyrinthian evening preparations.

It was not until the visitations started that the routines were ceased completely, replaced by a much deeper sense of the impossibility of preparation, the quiet, suffocating waiting. In the beginning, if there was a beginning, she had tried to establish an appropriate routine: to have a flashlight or a candle, a stout stick or a poker from the fireplace, a small pistol or a can of pepper spray. To the routine of gathering these precautions she added lessons in preparing for the indescribable, she read old fables and studied pidgin languages, she burned sage and she kept a camera at the ready, she carried a length of rope and would ceaselessly tie and re-tie a series of knots, as others would fondle a rosary, waiting for divine intervention.

She tried dozing, she tried pacing, she tried playing the piano, she tried hosting all night parties filled with laughter and dancing. In the end, the visitors ignored all the obstacles her routines had sought to put in their path, and she accepted that there were no routines, no preparations, which would have any effect.

Early on, when she had confided to others about the visitors, seeking acknowledgement or confirmation or assistance, there had been whispers of early stage schizophrenia or possibly a form of dementia accompanied by hallucinations, but neither sympathy nor advice on what she ought to do with her singular situation. She flushed the medications away, stopped sharing her stories with others, aware that where she was afraid but also curious they were stark terrified and would easily turn her into an outcast, or hospitalize her, for her own good.

She knew they meant well, in the sense of wishing her safe from harm, even if they only believed that the harm was internal and not something that occupied space and time in the real world, but she knew just as well that her visitors were actual parts of reality, that they would be just as likely to appear whether she was drugged or sober, freed or in a straightjacket. And as she would prefer sobriety and freedom for herself, she stopped mentioning her new nightly routines and pretended that all was as it ought to be, safe in the world and at home.

The first visits had scared her the most, through being both inexplicable and unexpected, those long, dark nights of a cold winter without snow suddenly broken by what appeared the twinkling of distant rush lights, the pattering and scampering of mice in the walls of the old farmhouse, which suddenly materialized, much larger, much brighter, and much more demanding. They were not mice, although that was the only word she could think of to describe them, creatures perhaps three feet high, furry, brown, with long, thin fingers and toes, and a constant source of movement and low level noise.

They seemed to hum, a tuneless varying pitch that grew in intensity as their numbers increased from three to five to seven to eleven to thirteen, and as their numbers grew their sound changed from a steadily pitched noise to something more dynamic and complicated, with undercurrents of counterpoint. When there was just one, a rare occurrence, the sound was like an appliance or a light bulb, but in numbers they took on the cast of a grand Victorian Cathedral choir.

In those first days, she could not interpret what they intended to do to her, whether she was to become a sacrifice or a meal, if she was seen as a god or a demon, if they were requesting her to perform miracles or provide oracles or to go on quests or to bring supplies or offerings. They would leave things for her, things which were perfectly mundane, except for the fact that they didn't belong. A silver soup spoon. A single shoe, a cigar box full of perfectly sharpened pencils. A small pile of oak leaves. A top hat. A pepper mill. A tricycle. A snail shell. And, in return, they would take things, a sock, a china plate, a length of yarn, a model airplane, a photograph, a bottle of olive oil. She wondered if she was part of a network of places, through which they were shuffling and bartering like a general store, and she began to wait for a message or an order.

After several weeks, the numbers of the mouse-like creatures began to decrease, and her sense of relief soon turned to fear, as she became aware of being watched at night, all night. The few mouse-like beings moved ever more frantically, brought more and more trinkets into her space, trying to hoard them or present them to mollify an angry god: old buttons, dried out pens, stubs from ancient cheque books, glass bottles, baby boots, lengths of lace, rusty bolts, a wagon, a bridle. She would have intervened on their behalf, for while they were not amicable, they had not attacked her, and their petty pilfering did not seem wantonly destructive, but she had no idea what to do, could not understand what was happening to them, or why they had suddenly become a part of her world.

One night, there were none, just the stronger sense than ever of being watched at night, all night. The items the creatures had left behind began to slowly disappear, not in the random heaps in which they had been brought, but one by one. She waited, watched, for months, as the items were invisibly removed, wondering if the items they had taken from her would likewise be returned. She doubted it; and she was correct, for once the final piece left by the first creatures was gone, the watching suddenly ended. All was quiet, peaceful, normal, so that she began to sleep again, to remember her old routines of listening to radio plays and throwing dinner parties and reclaiming an evening routine to establish the security of the house.

For several months she succeeded in convincing herself that reality had shifted back into place, until that early November evening, at the very beginning of winter, when the wailing began. It started at a low, almost imperceptible, level, as one blows across the top of a bottle and hears the whispers of the lost contents, but as the nights grew shorter and winter deepened, the wailing grew more insistent and louder. Even as the solstice passed, the single, miserable note grew in intensity, not constant but waxing and waning, waiting, hoping desperately for something. She didn't know how, or what, but she knew it was calling for her, and she could do no more than sit the vigil, waiting for it to arrive.

---

reading
Tony Hiss has good things to say, he just says them really awkwardly.

weather
the first leaves on trees! Come on, spring, you can do it!

coup d'état

If I had my way, jury duty summons would arrive on lavender stationary, scented, written in a calligraphic script, implying that one's civic duty was as worthwhile a function as a graduation or a wedding or a birth.
If I had my way, tax returns would be received by the Federal government, who would then mail out individual thank you notes for monies received, perhaps with a line about how the money is intended to be spent.
If I had my way, squirrels would become ground dwelling model citizens, and use their unquestionable intelligence and problem solving skills to collaborate with other animals, working with beavers to build condominium style dams and developing infrastructure systems incorporating waste removal and sewage facilities, eventually creating an entire non-human ecosystem modeled on the achievements of contemporary civil engineers.
If I had my way, the canal system would be dredged and reopened, and extended to operate along the pathways currently monopolized by the Interstate network, private barges and houseboats crowding the water ways as the expressways fill now with cars and commercial trucks, the canal systems creating an entire alternative infrastructure with specially designated school districts, alternative financial interchanges, reimagined chambers of government, separate but equal currencies, a slightly different accent, electricity on a different current, but all overlaid, perfectly, over the existing grid of society.
If I had my way, academic curricula would emphasize surveying, house building, rational thinking, and negotiating customs officials in foreign airports, with classes in how to bribe officials and how to form a coalition government and how to have a civil conversation with armed and dangerous leaders of drug cartels.
If I had my way, books would always have pictures and handwriting would remain legible, even when erased, smudged, accidentally washed out, except when the handwriting revealed some unnecessary, unpleasant sordid fact, in which case it would automatically reform itself to present the same information, if absolutely necessary, in a way pleasant, or at least tolerable, to comprehend.
If I had my way, grocery stores would be lit by candlelight and full of only the sound of live music, performers rotating according to the time of day, solo piano in the morning, bluegrass in the evening, jazz overnight, with daytime slots varying according to local talent and the season and perhaps even the tastes of the customers, within reason, rules sharply governing the use of cover bands, polka orchestras, and any use of the bagpipes.
If I had my way, airplanes would instigate a strict dress code and all in-flight communication from the flight crew and between passengers would only be conducted in French.
If I had my way, the budgets of professional sports teams and national defense would both be exactly equal to spending on public education and national health, and all of these things would then flourish together rather than compete for scarce financial resources.
If I had my way, every Thursday and every third Tuesday would always be sunny days, with unseasonably warm weather, and the second Monday of the month would be declared a day of community beauty, rain or shine, when lawns would be raked, shrubs pruned, litter cleared away, cars washed, weeds pulled, throughout the community, with the understanding that this has an equal value with going to work, and needn't always occupy a Saturday schedule.
If I had my way, souffles would always rise and meringues would never collapse, the first fresh berries could be harvested without inconvenience, apple trees would grace the corners of playgrounds and gardens remain free of slugs. Every morning cities would awaken to birdsong and not smog, and the work week would be reduced to allow for civic engagement.
If I had my way, modern communication would still incorporate vacuum tube delivery systems and Morse code, biplanes would be in regular private use, and fresh flowers of one sort or another would bloom year round, even in the snow of the coldest winters, where instead of driving down salted roads, sleighs and dog sleds would take over for all transportation needs, snowshoes and cross country skis filling in as required.
If I had my way, as the early summer light breaks over the horizon and the day has its first moment of being, the earth would pause, just for the smallest fraction of a second, so that it could be felt: yes, now it is morning.
If I had my way, warm croissants and hot coffee would be sold at subsidized kiosks on every street corner, and street performers would mime and juggle and pontificate on Greek philosophy, as part of a formal agreement with local colleges and art schools, and instead of the publication rush for tenure, scholars would compete for the charismatic and well attended street lectures, which would be much more highly esteemed than lecturing in auditoriums under florescent lights to a crowd held hostage.
If I had my way, part of the coming of age process of acquiring a drivers license and registering to vote would also include formal instruction in scuba diving and simple mechanics and parachuting and stunt performing, and every fifteen years workshops on stone carving, map reading, and marionette puppetry would be compulsory.
If I had my way, jobs whose sole purpose was to manage and create work for another person to then manage and process would be tied to activities that accomplished something concrete, be it baking bread or folding interoffice memorandum into origami animals, and patriotic holiday parades would incorporate not only marching bands and flag waving politicians, but also waltzing, hovercraft riding, and tug of war competitions between legal parties to decide the outcomes of non-criminal court cases.
If I had my way, intentions would be clear and conversations would be assisted by flash cards when words failed or were forgotten, and public stargazing would be encouraged from the roof of the local elementary school, telescopes provided.
If I had my way, the bustle and rush of a prepared and processed life would slowly begin to disintegrate, as laws encouraging the purely frivolous were enacted and enforced, and here we would be, you and I, drinking strong coffee and feeling the earth hesitate, just for a moment, as the day begins.

---

reading
USA Road Atlas!!! National Park Guides!!!
hooray for Google's collaborative maps function!

weather
yes, it's here : kayak season!