Trying to cope with feeling dismal.

I have a host of muddling posts that I wrote this summer that I hope to share. 

Why did I just drink a big thing of gin  Near-fatal last words. I was in bed by ten, full of despair. Summer muddle. The things that used to work for me, or get me through, no longer work. Mostly what I am saying is my wonderful ability to laze about and contemplate the beauty of the world that has lately just imposed numerous grim realities upon me, which suggests that I need to modify my philosophy.

No explanation as to why I feel so goddamned great today. I’m writing with clarity and more purpose than I have in a week. Keep it up.

I am absolutely loving my life as a man

It's a book!

Plum-pud

Plum-pudding is the term bestowed upon certain fragmentary parts of the whale’s flesh, here and there adhering to the blanket of blubber, and often participating to a considerable degree in its unctuousness. It is most refreshing, convivial, beautiful object to behold. As its name imports, it is of
an exceedingly rich, mottled tint, with a bestreaked snowy and golden ground, dotted with spots of deepest crimson and purple. It is plums of rubies, pictures of citron. Spite of reason, it is hard to keep yourself from eating it. I confess, that I once stole behind the foremast to try to eat it. It tasted something as I should conceive a royal cutlet from the thigh of Louis le Gros might have tasted, supposing him to have been killed the first day after the venison season, and that particular venison season contemporary with an unusually fine vintage of the vineyards of Champagne.

— Herman Melville

Secret Secret

Dad's great, called him up sitting on the porch with news, while the cat ate the grass that makes her throw up. She probably knows this and does it anyway, just like there are things that we do that we know we shouldn't, but we do them anyway. Anyway, Dad said he saw little Mike for the second time in a week at another golf course and I said dad little Mike already texted me about seeing you and I told him to stop stalking you. Meanwhile the cat was producing otherworldly squalls. Ultimately she puked next to the rhododendron bushes.

— Guess what dad? A hummingbird flew up to the hanging plant and then buzzed around to a pot plant that was resting on the rail for some nectar. Then after that...do you know that shirt I have with the dragons on it?
— I think so, he said.
— The hummingbird flew into it and tried to extract nectar from the yellow tails of the blue dragons.
— I'll be damned.
— I could feel their wings buzzing against my tumescent bicep. I was worried that their beak would stab me.
— On no they wouldn't harm you. I feel their wings on my face when I'm out near the feeder.

I later sang Fred Neil to Tim with some weeds

I told dad about my secret mission. I was going to Centralia, the Milledgeville of Washington state in that it was central. Mcmenamins refurbished a prohibition-era hotel there and I was going there on a secret mission that was secret insofar as I hadn't told anyone barring a few here and there (one contact in Australia). Mcmenamins are great with their lamps (see above). He said he wouldn't tell anyone. I said you'll tell your wife! And he said no I won't. I said you mustn't. He said she's taken Shari's twins to get physicals.

— Do you remember when I got my physical, dad?
— What?
— The doctor who wanted to check the curvature of my spine?
— What about him?
— He made me undress and walk back and forth for him in a straight line. He gave me a proctology exam and his wife had their living room in Better Homes and Gardens.
— Oh geeze.

my enhancing view 

Ba-di-da

Abby took two giant shits on the carpet when Prairie Wind arrived. I'm surprised they weren't accompanied by a disruptive yelp given the unfeasible magnitude of them. Whether this has to do with Abby having a crush on me I don't know, but Praire Wind seemed unfazed by it and showed me a photo of this cat who had laid on her shoe a long time yesterday, which got her thinking that maybe her feet exposed an unphysical feline threat into the air and Abby consequently decided to evacuate her bowels in our footpath to say hey don't. Whatever you are doing just stop. GET.OUT.

 I didn't expect Prairie Wind to leave so soon, but i said a lot of things I instantly regretted like associating drinking with biting my nails. She asked to see my nails and they really are the worst and if the state of them could be associated with drinkers it's some ugly stuff like Charles Bukowski who is terribly unattractive but very brilliant in the mind, something my hands are unable to fall back on.

Made a cheese plate that was met with a shrug. Dried fruit was on special at Safeway and in retrospect I know why. The pineapple chunks were okay, but the other container I picked up I thought was ginger slices, it was cantaloupe and a cantaloupe so sugary I nearly had an anxiety episode inside Little Axe records today looking for a present for matt Neff whose fortieth it is tomorrow. Why I chose to eat more of them after last night I do not know.

Guess the reason I am so effusive is I picked up Fred neil's first album for $7. I asked the proprietor of Little Axe how come so cheap and he said oops, deal of the century. I'm listening to it now and some albums are so strikingly poignant on an overcast summer's Friday when you don't work again until Sunday and you still feel lonely except you have Fred Neil's song and Abby's talking about you, but you can't hear a word she's saying...BA-DI-DA I texted Prairie Wind this morning. She's in town all weekend and I made a joke about how I should have made a to-go box of cantaloupe slices for her. She has yet to text me back and it's now hours later. Ba-di-da

Dark Side in the Art of No 2014

I was sitting in Tim's front room reading Bartleby and Co. by Enrique Vila-Matas, who had this to say about Herman Melville:

He was never one to go to Church, but we know that during his years as a recluse he would approach his window and watch those making their way to church, and his look is said to have contained the brief history of the Dark Side in the Art of the No

At the same time I was reading, Tim made a follow-up phone call to a concerned client of the appliance service company he works for. So while Tim said: "Hi MIndy... "I was also reading about Melville doing that. No relation apart from those two things happening at that given moment in 2014. Below is what Tim said to Mindy in full.

I got your message about your squeaker. The thing about squeaking dryers is this: they aren't terribly dangerous, but they can be...(repeating what she said) obnoxious, that's right. If you can get the serial number off the back of the door, I can drop by with some parts...,"

ever grouted?

wisht I had a photo to remember the new trade I just learnt. Goes by the name grout. my hands hurt. Mayb its grout. Can you get gout from grout? I'm watching tim's cat bathe herself. She's orange and likes her belly tickled so she can bite me. If I could feel my hand itd probably hurt. Funny she runs out of the bathroom when I shower. This happened another time at least once a day. But she never seen me naked, wouldn't care if she did. I used to care when pets see me naked, but either I or they got used to it and now it's no biggie. Remember that humanity began facing your pet with utter nakedness (derrida). I'll post a photo on another occasion of his animal, but for now here's two people who, let's face it, have a considerable claim on my well-being. Actually it's a photo of a hotel room at the hotel that I work at.

Ahem

Writing, he thought, had “always been a simple craft as far as its geometric description. Write a beginning, middle, and end, and thrill them.” — Barry Hannah

Took a raincheck on the spaghetti

Oh my gosh, my favorite professor says this, oh my gosh, william gaddis, the recognitions, oh my gosh, it's so good, he says, but seriously oh my gosh, this is me now, I am like totally fried, but what a life, huh? and such glorious weather and the secretary downstairs made me spaghetti to eat yesterday that I couldn't eat because I was a marathon of nerves running high, still I managed to inform her of this fact as I scooted out the door to present some information that I found worrisome (and why I couldn't eat) to transmit due to my lack of engagement with it, but I hoped the jokes that I had embedded in the document would mask the inherent insipidness and lack of findings. subject: spaghetti, can I save it for tomorrow?

S, can I have the spaghetti tomorrow. I am giving a presentation at two o' clock and I am really nervous about it and can't eat! I am so sorry. But tomorrow I will definitely be hungry. Many thanks, I can't wait to eat it!

S: Of course – it is in the refrigerator whenever you want it!! 

Stop stressing – that presentation is a slam dunk!

She was right too, I nailed it. Approximately 24 hours later she gives me a light bulb and I read baraka's Dutchman then dive face-first into her delicious spaghetti and i can't even breath. The meaty meat sauce is intoxicating and I do not care.

A true thinker

I have been called a lot of things before...

- out front of the High Museum of Art in Atlanta last weekend, heading towards a Rodin mold

Birds are great, love them squirrels too

Squirrel had a nut in its mouth and saw me as a threat. I was talking to it - on the approach. In tail-wagging fear (whether wagging the tail constitutes fear I don't know, they do this a lot), the thing darted up a tree and then cruised out on a branch. The squirrels here, I have noticed, love to jump and launch themselves across giant voids and this one was no different. But the branch didn't have enough strength to support it and started to droop. Still the squirrel leaped and not surprisingly it missed! Fell right on its face fifteen feet or so down. I stood there in shock. The squirrel didn't think anything of it though and didn't make a noise (acorn in its mouth). Ran up the telephone pole with the acorn in its mouth. They are a dominant creature and I sometimes see five at a time, two of which, maybe three, will be chasing each other around a tree, while I'm outside chuckling into my drink.

It was a blustery, near-dusk night, the other night, we had been getting tornado warnings, but not on this night, there was thunder I think and a dark sky and I glimpsed a gorgeous bird, brown, yellow, its coloring was superb, a yellow band on its tail shining like fresh paint. I was on campus in the writing office on the third floor, making copies with no one else in the building, which is somewhat atmospheric and I went to get a closer look. In the tree to the right was a treeful of these birds, who soon flocked to a tree along the next building, nibbling on the red fruit present in the picture below.

Then two days ago, I saw a blue jay. My first sighting. They're mean, my friend tells me and I told her I did hear a squawk as it zoomed by my office window.

Lordly Mexican and he still likes the books

I have wanted to post about this now for some time, but don't believe I was capable. See similar to an architect who doesn't design a great building until he's ready to die of old age, I feel I did not have the necessary weight of world experience behind me that I could make a statement of the kind that I am about to make with any reasonable authority. The grilled streak tacos are delicious to behold at El Tequila. We were alarmed to discover that they will no longer be doing their $1.75 margarita specials however. Still it is the place to go in Milledgeville. In other news,  Dustin and I are going to Atlanta to the High MUseum of Art today. Actually I need to arouse myself. I am already notoriously late in life, but this time I need to be ready like my life depended on it. It will be swell to get my brain charged on something that's not the books, though I still like them.

32 oz of magic

The Unconscionable 2: Athens, Georgia Booze-up

Striving towards the upward reaches of mediocrity; goddamn it bill

It's perhaps worth me considering my worth in this community. So far this semester I have contributed two worthless documents and an increasingly wild hairdo. One that is worth salvaging perhaps, the work on the other hand is not even something a dog would like to nibble on. Nevertheless I am here, striving to mediocrity. I can afford a martini once a night and wahtever. I am not an intellectual because I am too much fun. Will my brain grow larger than it is. My teacher told me to stop using notes!

Dave Graney told me to do that too, or he would look at me with bemusement, when I attended his radio show with Lady Clarkey. So I used my notes in cass this time because I didn't know what I was talking about and I needed them, but the notes were worthless they didn't say anything to me. My arrogance to teach the class William S Burroughs was inexcusable. I stared at my notes. The class was silent, jostling uncomfortably. I wish I had today back. It was one of those days I would do differently for sure and there aren't many of those days that I have much anymore except right now!

Dear Fredd Blogg

Last week I laid down next to Flannery's grave.

Today I saw a lizard that was more human in its expressiveness than a lot of the people in my writing program in Milledgeville and that's not to say that they are inexpressive (full disclosure: my first submission was eviscerated like the plague), just that this lizard was unexpectedly lifelike. That said, there's not a lot of expressiveness occurring among the writers - everyone gives off a sort of terrified countenance and that is kinda neat. I am keen to win them over.  I'd be crazy not to try. Furthermore, Flannery would have hated my story and there I am posing seductively over her grave.

OMG so there's a band called History of Apple Pie. What can I say the history of music just got a whole bunch interesting.

My teacher bought me a beer to cheer me up after workshop, but i was already drunk. The film Fried Green Tomatoes was filmed in Georgia. My friend Sarah served me them the other night.

The rap group De La Soul just made all their stuff available for free. How fresh is it? It is so fresh. I am astounded with their taste. I am identifying the dopest samples that I only recently discovered. Fried GGreen Tomatoes.

Photo of campus

I'm going through all the different ways to have a dry martini, but first..

I lay in bed and listen to the ladybugs fall into my hair.

tch...tch

My roommate, I call him my roommate instead of my housemate because this is not a house, but or do we share a room. Still it is not a flat, or else he would be my flatmate. I use to tell Philip's friends in London that we lived together and he immediately said, oh nooooo, we share a flat.

I left a drunken message on my Swedish friend's voicemail when I heard she was losing her apartment. Sorry about the flat! I texted. I'm such a cultural dilettante. I'm enjoying this beefeater martini: two parts gin, one part extra dry vermouth. Maybe less vermouth next time and a spanish olive.

Daniel loves vodka martinis. No vermouth, just the dirty olive mix in the shaker and a surplus of olives. He even has an array of colorful straws and toothpicks. His socialization skills are astounding.

I have a great apartment and tonight has been good for reading and making comments on facebook.

Year in Reading 2013

I plowed through so many flipping books this year I don't see the point in ranking them all. I won't rank the ones I reread every year because I reread them because they are favorites and what is this list but a list of favorites and the twenty that I list here will be ones that I read for the first time and will reread again aside from longer reads like The Ambassadors, Freedom and Under the Volcano because those take the kind of commitments that I might not have as I encroach my years of grave sickness and destitution. I am reading more non-fiction and more women. Found my soulmate in Dawn Powell, who I write nothing like. Wish I could because she is a comic genius.

FICTION

1. Memoirs of Hecate County by Edmund Wilson
   Subsequently saddened that it wasn't all true, but still I pretend. Surprise hit of 2013 from 1946.
2. Naked Lunch by William S Burroughs
   An astounding achievement. Here's a story: I was housesitting over at Jeff's. Dogsitting really. Jeff had a dog and a snake. I had been asked to turn the snake's light off, it's a python really, off at night and back on in the morning. The morning I went to the python's room to turn off the light, she was not in her cage. My heart pounded when I looked down and saw the python darting between my legs. Reminded me of the time my brother frightened a snowflake eel from out under a rock and between my legs in the Cook Islands. Turns out it was the zipper tassel on my fanny pack swaying around and not Jeff's snake. I called Jeff who said the snake had its own balcony that is not visible from the front. Told timtam for it was she who had brought me the fanny pack as a gift from Vegas and she said what does the python transport itself into a balcony from another dimension? I just hung out pondering this, while working up an appetite for next door by reading Naked Lunch and its scenes of horribly detailed fantastic gay sex.
3. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
   Probably VN's best.
4. Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry
   Tequila-sodden. Electrifying prose that has the DT's. 
5. Life on the Missisippi by Mark Twain
   Love Mr Twain. Sui generis thing of wonder.
6. Masters of Atlantis by Charles Portis
   Read during a heartbreak and chuckled like a drunken doofus! High praise for the high priest of the folksy parlance.
7. Ninety Two in the shade by Thomas McGuane
   Crushing 60s vibe, when the buzz well and truly died, coked-up to the gills, like Fear and Loathing.
8. The Golden Spur by Dawn Powell
   Frothy like the Dud Avocado and my coffee when properly heated.
9. Freedom by Franzen
   Rivals the best of Philip Roth.
10. The Fun Parts by Sam Lipsyte
11. Badtime in Civil Warland by George Saunders
    Deserves several thoughtful praises every second by those of the corporate world who have good sense.
12. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S Thompson
13. Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
    Underappreciated, I reckon. 
14. The Violent Bear it Away by Flannery O' Connor
    With love, it's her bleakest.
15. Personal Anthology by Jose Luis Borges
    More mystery and detective work that you could shake a stick at. Held together by the most enchanting, swinging prose.
16. The Easter Parade by Richard Yates
    I think the artist Grimes may have taken her name from the sisters in Richard Yates because she's really good and that would be really cool. I liked The Easter Parade a lot and could stomach the devastation and emotional brutality of their tragedy better than a lot of my friends, who I reckon are way less sensitive than me.
17. Patrick Melrose novels by Edward St Aubyn
    Awesomely bleak but not a patch on Yates remarkably.
18. Speedboat by Renata Adler
    Weird and wonderfully experimental.
19. Maggie by Stephen Crane
    Powerful appreciation for gutter-strewn sex workers. 
20. A Way of Life Like Any Other
    I loved Darcy O Brien's funny, sad fictionalized memoir of Hollywood Babylon with Dad George O' brien star of Murnau's Sunrise.

Other lesser works include Men's Club by Leonard Michaels, a novel that's not a scratch on his short stories, Dalva by Jim Harrison, noble in its ambitions, but (Dalva) thinks too much like a man. Jim's The English Major is one of his best. A retired biology professor takes a former student (highly-sexualized, of course) on a road trip to rename state birds. Overrated was Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr particularly once the entertaining slapstick turned into a dystopian futureworld. Black Spring by Henry Miller was good, but unmemorable. I liked the poetry collection Play the piano... by Charles Bukowski an awful lot and thought The Second Coming by Walker Percy was good, but dogmatic in the way it beat you over the head with its faith. The Watch and In the Loyal Mountains by Rick Bass are good, but came off as second-rate Barry Hannah probably because Rick and Barry run in the same circles and have the same hobbies that introduce them to the same types of people even though Barry does a better job of pushing the berserker envelope. Sea Wolf by Jack London was kind of a slog for the same reason I didn't think too much of the Bob Redford sinking yacht movie and Malcolm by James Purdy was a good strange, eccentric, then disturbingly strange in not a good way, but then its ending was so poignant, I must revisit this weird fairy tale. The Ask by Sam Lipsyte prompted me to question the state of the comic novel and eager to revisit Portnoy's Complaint because Lipsyte's book was irritatingly ranty in ways that I never felt with the Roth book. His stories however are instant classics for me (The Fun Parts), using sarcasm as impressive high comedy, but probably don't overstay their welcome like the novels or the people who deploy sarcasm frequently do. A couple things make McGuane's most recent novel (his last?) Driving on the Rim by different from his other nine. For one, the author hasn't used first person since 1978's Panama — not everyone's favorite. In fact, critics gave him hell for Panama, a little unfairly, I reckon because I loved the sad, funny story about the price of fame starring a burnt-out case with a brain fried so dearly on cocaine that he can't remember his dog's name. Panama was loosely autobiographical, while the new one isn't. In fact, B. Pickett, is about as far from T. McGuane as H. Humbert is from V. Nabokov. The Heart of a Dog by Bulgakov is minor stuff. The Ambassadors by Henry James was super dense and mysterious. I liked it. The Absolutely True Story of a Part-time Indian by Sherman Alexie was a charming kid's book and gifted to me by a nifty Navajo. Letters to Yesenin by Jim Harrison are poems to a Russian poet who killed himself while thinking of killing himself and it is these poems that he writes to a long-dead poet that saves his life. Play it as it lays by Joan Didion is so spooky and creepy, it makes me happy to be east of the west. Expected to glean creative inspiration from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, or at least surprise. The absurdity and nonsense seemed old hat.

NON-FICTION

1. Just Before Dark by Jim Harrison
   Essay collection full of beautiful prose and a searching hilarious mind who really cares what he thinks and eats.
2. An Outside Chance by Thomas McGuane
   Essays from the greatest mind that I have ever had the pleasure of getting an email from.
3. Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey
   Nails the harsh essence of the Southwest in lean muscular prose and gives indirect advice on how to go about experiencing it.
4. Lunches with Orson Welles and Henry Jaglom
   From one of the greatest minds to ever live in an age without an ability to email me. His candor and unfiltered style is why I enjoy Bret Easton Ellis's twitter.
5. Fran Lebowitz Reader
   What a lady. Mostly superb satire.
6. Killer by Nick Tosches
   Pulpy fever dream. 
7. Every Love Story is a Ghost Story by DT Max
   Page-turner about David Foster Wallace that confirmed my suspicions that he is someone that I would have never enjoyed being around. 
8. Nathanael West/ His Life and Art by Jay Martin
   Exhaustive biography of a unique and compassionate ironist

The Dud Avocado and Other Delights

Dud w/ piece of peppermint bark

1. Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey
2. The English Major by Jim Harrison
3. Men's Club by Leonard Michaels
4. Freedom by Franzen
5. Just Before Dark by Jim Harrison
6. Masters of Atlantis by Charles Portis
7. Absolutely True Story of a Part-time Indian by Sherman Alexie
8. Tennis Handsome by Barry Hannah
9. Naked Lunch by William S Burroughs
10. Badtime in Civil Warland by George Saunders
11. Dalva by Jim Harrison
12. Letters to Yesenin by Jim Harrison
13. Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr
14. An Outside Chance by Thomas McGuane
15. Henderson the Rain King by Saul Bellow
16. Ninety Two in the shade by Thomas McGuane
17. Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry
18. Black Spring by Henry Miller
19. Play the piano by Charles Bukowski
20. The Second Coming by Walker Percy
21. The Watch by Rick Bass
22. In the Loyal Mountains by Rick Bass
23. The Ambassadors by Henry James
24. Sea Wolf by Jack London
25. Maggie by Stephen Crane
26. Killer by Nick Tosches
27. Every Love Story is a Ghost Story by DT Max
28. Malcolm by James Purdy
29. The Ask by Sam Lipsyte
30. A Handful of Dust by Evelyn Waugh
31. Driving on the Rim by Thomas McGuane
32. Lunches with Orson Welles and Henry Jaglom
33. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
34. The Heart of a Dog by Bulgakov
35. Fran Lebowitz Reader
36. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
37. Norwood by Charles Portis
38. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S Thompson
39. The Fun Parts by Sam Lipsyte
40. The Easter Parade by Richard Yates
41. Day of the Locust by Nathanael West
42. Julip by Jim Harrison
43. Nathanael West/ His Life and Art by Jay Martin
44. Never Mind by Edward St Aubyn
45. Bad Taste by Edward St Aubyn
46. A Way of Life like Any Other by Darcy O'Brien
47. Memoirs of Hecate County by Edmund Wilson
48. Speedboat by Renata Adler
49. Play it as it Lays by Joan Didion
50. Life on the Missisippi by Mark Twain
51. Personal Anthology by Jose Luis Borges
52. Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
53. The Bushwhacked Piano by Thomas McGuane
54. White People by Allan Gurganus
55. The Dud Avocado by Elaine Dundy
56. Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin
57. My Uncle Dudley by Wright Morris
58. The Violent Bear it Away by Flannery O' Connor
59. The Golden Spur by Dawn Powell

The Golden Spur

...so I have been writing nothing at all whatsoever and whatever I have been ill I have been sleeping I have been thinking about absolutely nothing, I haven't been dreaming (would I even know if I was? if I have, I have not been remembering) I am still working I am still sick I am still drinking McMenamin's mocoas and getting palpitations everytime I drink them, they are addictions that hotwire my heart I still read when I'm not sleeping I'm wide awake and not reading a lot I am not making sense of what I read I still read because therein lies the beauty of the world that and eating but I am eating very little mostly turkey leftovers from christmas dinner I haven't got around to the spaghetti sauce that Amanda and her husband Wes made me, they asked tonight at work, she is a housekeeper who cans, I called it tomato sauce and wes corrected me, he lashed out actually told me it was spaghetti sauce and I knew that, I guess the reason I called it tomato sauce was because I was considering using it for cannelloni nevertheless it will be messy like the serviette the swedish girl wore after the winter mushroom sloppy joe she had in the restaurant the other night, and this serviette looked like a truly fine example of abstract expressionism, autumnal browns and yellows, I turned to my colleague Kevin and said that dirty piece of linen would make a fortune on ebay, which alarmed Kevin for he saw that I meant what I said with great conviction and was already imagining a frame for it...

She materializes at the front desk at the best moment because it is always the best moment when she appears, she often steps behind the desk to talk to me, does she want to see my boots, I wonder, or does she want to show me hers, they are very nice, I don't compliment her, there are far too many nice things to say, so really where does one begin? She is a lightning rod of fierce originality, she has one outfit, equestrian blazer, scarlet to match her lipstick, cowboy shirt underneath, white with black piping, it is I am certain the outfit that Lee envisaged for suzie Jane in Hey Cowboy, she doesn't wash her hair, only conditions it, how did we even talk about this, perhaps it was I who needed to apologize for the state of my hair the last time she came in, it was lifeless and miserable, having just been washed by products clearly not up to the task, and did she wash her hair I may have asked boldly, I was confident I was having excellent hair on this particular encounter, but no comment from her about mine which was fine I was hardly fishing, our chatter was comically screwball, she wears a coonskin cap, then we talked about her lipstick, again how bold of me, I don't know how it went there so suddenly, she has blue eyes, she's 29, and talks Swedish after a few drinks, she drinks spirits, why she's ebullient, we talked lip balm, chapped lips, it is cold in Portland, Flagstaff had warm afternoons, it's been cold throughout the day and foggy,  she grew up here, it is her mother who is Swedish, everyone is wearing layers, I pressed the button for her cab and she gave me a Christmas present, a tiny pocketknife, an antique tied with a little red ribbon to a stick of sandalwood, it's wonderfully fragrant, we hugged and she repositioned us heart-to-heart and my world was spinning, what was I thinking I couldn't tell her I was leaving for georgia in a week her cab showed up I didn't even have her phone number I blew her a kiss and she was gone, home to her apartment on Christmas Day and then I woke up on boxing day feeling very ill after searching all over the house for Dawn Powell's The Golden Spur absolutely convinced that my sister-in-law had left with it and then managed to call off the search patrol at 8am the next morning when I discovered that it had fallen under my bed behind my brown carry-on.