What does it mean when you repeatedly dream about marriage and bed linens?
“You were talking in your sleep.”
“Was I? Oh no. What did I say?”
“You said, ‘if we get married, will you fluff my pillow every night?’”
“Huh.”
“My answer is no. Just so we’re clear.”
“Oh, we’re clear.”
A Jeep with my dad’s initials in the license plate
A cat crouching under the Jeep
A child with a bagel around his pointer finger like a ring
A cab driver pouring a cup of coffee out the window
The “not going out of business/losing our lease/becoming a Chase Bank or a Duane Reade” signs in the windows at Fish’s Eddy
Soggy papers in a leaking AMNY box
A girl sprinting to beat the light (she didn’t make it)
The leftovers my roommate brings home for me
Peanut butter toast with Nutella
Our dishwasher
“You never called spaghetti ‘pasgetti’ when you were little?”
“No.”
“What did you call it?”
“I called it ‘spaghetti.’”
I also pronounced “available” with a Y until I was nine, put “Please Do Not Disturv” signs on my bedroom door, and thought an emergency vehicle that drives people to the hospital was called an “amblee-ance,” but I left all that out. It’s not lying by omission if he doesn’t ask, right?
This is what I’ve been listening to this week:
Naked Eye by Luscious Jackson
Time by Sarah McLachlan
Live Your Life by T.I.
Just Like Heaven by The Cure
We Looked Like Giants by Death Cab for Cutie
Remember when Puffy or whatever he used to go by and Sting performed “I’ll Be Missing You” at the MTV Video Music Awards? What was that, like ten years ago?
More like eleven.
And now it looks like all the nominees for Best New Artist might be younger than I am.
At least that makes me too old to get caught up in a battle over promise rings.
This is what I did yesterday afternoon while it rained and rained and rained and rained:
These are some names I’ve been called this week:
Sick Puppy
Snotty McSnotterson
Miss Sniffelupagus
As in, “Need a tissue, Miss Sniffelupagus?”
Hey now, didn’t your mothers teach you that it’s not polite to call people names?
Mine did.
My mother also taught me the words to a Contac cold medicine jingle from the 1960s, when “they were allowed to sell the really strong stuff over the counter.”
“A summer cold is a different animal
An ugly animal, oooh!
It hits you in the summer,
When you’ve got a lot to do!â€
This is what I’ve been listening to this week while I breathe noisily through my mouth:
I Do by Jewel
Feeling Good (which I do not) by Nina Simone
Something Good This Way Comes by Jakob Dylan
Casual Viewin’ by 54-4
Forever by Chris Brown
I realize that sounds like a threat to chocolate, but I don’t mean it as a threat to chocolate. I mean it as a threat to you. As in, “It’s time for breakfast. Give me some chocolate, or I’m going to eat you.”
This is what I’ve been listening to this week:
Say by John Mayer
Rooftops (A Liberation Broadcast) by Lostprophets
Take Me Home Tonight by Eddie Money
You’re The Voice by Heart
Divorce Song by Liz Phair
Back to Brooklyn tomorrow, but the quarters already seem close. As much as I look forward to coffee shops with three varieties of artificial sweeteners and clothing retailers that don’t sell neoprene waders, I’ll miss having a decent excuse to eat a non-non-fat muffin every morning and wear the same $2.00 tee shirt every afternoon.
. . . with a pillow, a bed sheet, Unaccustomed Earth, and the bay breeze rustling the dune grass . . .
As Dusk Began To Settle In by Ed Ruscha.
My brother told me that he’s interested in clocks. He said it as though it’s something innate that he discovered about himself, maybe even that surprised him, that he couldn’t control. It’s been there all along, but it’s just bubbled up to the surface all of a sudden.
I told him that I’m interested in chandeliers. I don’t think that it’s an innate thing that I’m drawn to chandeliers specifically, but I’m intrinsically attracted to their sparkliness and structural grace.
Those elements are embodied by the thirty-three starburst chandeliers at the Metropolitan Opera. The eleven that hang in the lobby have been sent off on holiday in Vienna. They will be repaired and refurbished, all expenses paid by Swarovski.
My brother and I take off tomorrow for a beach holiday, though I don’t expect to encounter many chandeliers—or clocks—on the Cape.