Sunset

Literally the best sunset I've ever seen. It was amazing... right when the sun dipped low to the water, all the people on the beach slowed and stopped their activities to watch it sink. The wet sand was blindingly reflective of the sky. And the sun wavered just on the horizon for what felt like minutes, while we watched it flare like explosions in the distance. And then suddenly, almost without me noticing it, the people on the beach started moving again and going back to their routines. It was pretty cool to see a beachful of people aligned to watch one event in nature, unconsciously bound together as witness.

A manifestation of the will to quote things...

"I anticipate a coming season of dilated time and of women all in disarray."

"On the way out again, I suddenly saw everything clearly: Sigmund Freud painting cocaine onto his septum, the rising uproar of the past hour and a half, the idling Audi full of rash behavior that lay ahead, the detonating summer; and because it was a drunken perception, it was perfect, entire, and lasted about half a second."

"I felt another of those sudden onslaughts of love, the desire to run to them and embrace them both, to be seen in their company, to live my life among men and women who dressed up like this and then went down the sidewalk like cinema kings."

"This bar was esteemed for the quality or at least the profusion of the graffiti in both its gentlemen's ad ladies' rooms, which were rarely washed or repainted. I read this exhange:
WHAT'S SO GREAT ABOUT WOMEN, ANYWAY?
And, lower:
HEY, EVERY WOMAN, PAL, IS A VOLUME OF STORIES A CATALOGUE OF MOVEMENTS A SPECTACULAR ARRAY OF IMAGES
Then:
PLUS THERE'S THE MYSTERY OF LEARNING ABOUT HER CHILDHOOD
A fourth man had concluded:
AND OF EVERYTHING THAT'S CONCEALED UNDER HER CLOTHES"

"That evening I rode downtown on an unaccountably empty bus, sitting in the last row. At the front I saw a thin cloud of smoke rising around the driver's head.
'Hey, bus driver,' I said. 'Can I smoke?'
'May I,' said the bus driver.
'I love you,' I said."

"How about 'a manifestation of the will-to-bigness.' "

"When I remember that dizzy summer, that dull, stupid, lovely, dire summer, it seems that in those days I ate my lunches, smelled another's skin, noticed a shade of yellow, even simply sat, with greater lust and hopefulness -- and that I lusted with greater faith, hoped with greater abandon. The people I loved were celebrities, surrounded by rumor and fanfare; the places I sat with them, movie lots and monuments. No doubt all of this is not true remembrance but the ruinous work of nostalgia, which obliterates the past, and no doubt, as usual, I have exaggerated everything."

--The Mysteries of Pittsburgh

Tricked you!

So you thought I wasn't going to do it... that I wasn't going to make it through NaBloPoMo and I was going to fail on Day 2. As Bethany used to say, fooooo' youuuuu!

I admit, it's something of a miracle that I'm here on a Friday night, almost 9 o'clock, and I'm sitting alone in my empty house writing instead of out doing something mildly self-destructive. But here I am! Dan is out at a play, and Justin is in LA. If either of them were here I'm sure I'd end up doing something non-solitary, but it's probably good for me. I'm considering this night in a birthday gift to myself. The gift of rest and reflection.

I recently finished "The Mysteries of Pittsburgh," which came to me via a recommendation and loan from Laurel. She told me it was reminiscent of our lives and I think it kind of is, in many ways but not all. The book is about a guy who recently graduated from college in Pittsburgh and finds himself suddenly friends with a new crowd over the summer, and if you boil it down to the essentials, it's about friendship and that kind of madness that affects you when you are surrounded by people you admire so much it's almost painful. In that sense, it reflects where I am now. Since I moved from Palo Alto to San Francisco, just three or so months ago, I have felt maddeningly joyful about my life more often than ever before. It's not that I'm never sad or bored or frustrated, but it's that the highs are so high here... and the lows are just normal. I feel really lucky to have met and had the chance to hang out with the people who live here, who are now my friends.

It's not that I don't have great friends in Palo Alto - I do - but the intensity of the city life is different. I sound stupid right now, I know it - I sound really naive - but really, it's true. We all live now in this crazy, constantly happening environment, where you can stumble across something amazing any moment. That ratchets up the intensity of things pretty fast. Throw into that a lot of really smart, strange people and that's pretty much my life of late. It's hard to really comprehend it, to really grab ahold of that and make it conceivable, because things and people and interactions are too sprawling, too big, too boundless to be pinned down.

All I know is that I'm grateful. I have to remind myself, because I've been really tired and burnt out lately, that it's all for a reason, and that this is a place and a time that I can't live again, not ever in the same way I'm doing it the first time. So I am happy that it's here.

Tomorrow I'm going wine tasting with some friends, some very new, some old. I know it will be another weekend like the ones I've had recently - a blur, a happy blur. I'm excited.

More book memes. I'm a nerd.

How many books do you own? No idea... My guess is around 200, here in SF.

Last book you bought? Just bought "Not Fade Away," "Ulysses," "Infinite Jest," "No Country for Old Men," and "Saturday" on Amazon a couple of weeks ago. Oh no! wait! it was "High Fidelity" and "Slam," the new Nick Hornby book, at Borrone's when I went to a reading. Oops... I may have a problem. I black out my book buying.

Last book someone bought you? I can't remember. I think it was "The Book Thief" which my mom got me for Valentine's Day. My friend Christian gave me "The Road," but he didn't buy it for me.. just gave me his copy.

Last book read? David Foster Wallace's "Supposedly Fun Thing I'll never do again" - and now I'm on Chabon's "Mysteries of Pittsburgh," as you loyal goodreads.com-ers know.

Five books that mean a lot to me:

The Dwindling Party. I really want to get my own copy of this, but it's so much money now, since it's out of print. It's really sad and awful, but my aunt and uncle's house was in danger during the fires in Running Springs, CA, and the first thing I thought about was this book, somewhere in their bookshelves. (I should probably clarify that they themselves, and their pets, and their essentials, were and are safe at my parents' house. Also that, thank god, their house is out of danger now.)

The Authoritative Calvin and Hobbes. I have this memory of my sister giving this to me the Christmas I was six years old. IF that memory is accurate, then she had nothing to do with actually picking it out, since she would have been 3 at the time. But I remember that, and so this is the most precious of my many Calvin and Hobbes books (even excluding the deluxe edition that weighs about 80 pounds).

Timequake, by Kurt Vonnegut. This was the first Vonnegut I read, and it's a backward way to go about reading him. It basically repeats everything from all the other books, all his little wisdoms. But it was first, and I loved it first, so I still love it, even though I have read everything else he's written which is arguably better or more original.

(This is starting to get really hard. I feel like I am excluding things.)

The Witch of Blackbird Pond. I wrote the author of this book because I LOVED it, so so much. I illustrated it with watercolor pencils (remember those?) I got busted for "reading ahead" in 5th grade when, home sick I finished this book the day after we started it, and went back the next day totally jazzed about talking about it and then really disappointed when it turned out I couldn't share and also sad my teacher yelled at me for reading ahead. Yes, this is a great book.

I guess it's time to go for an adult book, besides Timequake. For that, the Unbearable Lightness of Being, because it is, to quote Nellie Olsen, too-too. (That is what she says, right? In a later book, though.)

Ack!! No! I take it back! I will say instead The Long Winter, because how could I not include a Laura Ingalls Wilder book in this list? And, why the Long Winter? Because it is long and depressing and heartwarming and scary all at once, and because Almanzo came back with the wheat.