bolted

I am sitting on the BoltBus taking advantage of its wi-fi, for which I have paid, if not handsomely, then at least in a manner deserving the love of someone beyond said payment's mother. Maybe said payment's mother and a drunken sorority girl. My connection is stable at any moment the bus is not in motion, which has been much of the ride, so I am current on today's events, my e-mail correspondence and what the landscape we are driving through looks like from space. I just read Mandy's latest blog post, which is full of the sort of happy delirium/delirious happiness that I also experience at 4 in the morning but am not able to put into the sort of joyful phrases she can conjure. I'm happy that she's recently experienced that kind of happiness, and I hope I can experience it soon, too, and I hope that you can too, and that in telling you that it exists, a pure sense of joy that results from nothing but being awake, alive and sensing the amazingness of the world--that in telling you this, I am helping it happen for you, too.

warm and fuzzy

Had Claire and Meera & Fran over for dinner last night. I never have dinner guests, but I'm not sure why--I love cooking for other people. Made a mixed green salad with halved grape tomatoes, avocado and an apple cider vinaigrette with some fresh rosemary and thyme; channa masala (my old standby, but with less tomato juice in it) and wild rice topped with whole milk yogurt; and these super delicious George Foreman Grill-pressed sandwiches of gruyere and carmelized onions on sourdough, after a sandwich Ari had described having at 'wichcraft. Meera had made a really tasty strawberry-rhubarb cobbler and whipped cream, so we followed dinner with that, and then I boiled up some of the sassafras root I harvested last week in Central Park on a walk with "Wildman" Steve Brill, and we had some tea. It was kind of licorice-y and a little mentholated. After all that, we played Squabble and I impressed myself and others by transforming "MASS" into "SWAMIS".

Dinner parties are so fun! Only successful if the guests all get along and have things to say to each other, which they did, in this case. Though I'm convinced that Claire is just really good at making interesting conversation--and reserving choice stories for varying occasions, so that the fact that she was raised in a cult only became known to me last night, six years into knowing her! That was a good hunk of fascinatia for the night.

I'm so happy to have such cool friends! And I hope I get to have a lot more dinner parties in this house--it's particularly good for entertaining.

at the risk of turning this into a dream journal

One from the middle of the night was a movie I was convinced, in brief moments of wakefulness, was an actual Coen Brothers or Frank Darabont production I'd seen. It was a dustbowl era parable about a doctor of mixed race whose industrialist father accepted his financial support but not his love. Robert Duvall played the father. There were all types of setpieces in this film: a spelling bee, a supermarket hold-up with an array of streamer-shooting tommy guns, a flood that ruined the industrialist's factories. An old man, maybe the hero's senile grandfather, opened and closed the film with the same speech, addressed to the camera, delivered at two different moments in his life. It had something to do with what he called the "buxenell vagaries of life and business. That's what this film is about."

every day i wind the coil

I went for a swim this evening and discovered that I'm alarmingly out of shape. I was exhausted after 20 minutes and had the good sense not to push myself past my doughy limits for fear of collapse. I walked home, dazed and high from all the oxygen, and then I practiced the banjo and made this and fell in love with myself for being able to follow a recipe. Then I proceeded to ooh and ahh over Karen's bag-ripened mangos, which are still in my teeth.

But whatever discipline and sagacity I exercised at the gym didn't transfer to the home environment, because I started futzing with the tuning on the banjo after dinner. And when I tightened the fourth string too tightly and it popped like a gunshot, it was like I had pulled the trigger on myself. Now I can't play The Crawdad Song no more, at least until I buy me some new strings.

Lesson learned for the night: Be aware of limits, when to push them, when not to, and when to leave well enough alone.

my subconscious is telling me something

Another dream: I lay on my bed and look down to see that my right leg is covered in dark purple bed sores all the way down to the foot. Alarmed, I hop to my feet and walk around. Sores gradually disappear.

Ever since buying the most comfortable mattress and mattress pad combination ever, I have been spending more than a healthy amount of time either asleep or trying to be asleep. I have not been to the gym in a month. Today I forewent a 40-mile bike ride for four more hours of sleep. I am thinking of cutting friends out of my life so that I may spend more time with my beloved.

This is getting to be a problem, but I am in no position to stage my own intervention.

assumed names

In the dream I just woke from, a friend of mine was going by the pseudonym "Teshevta Aron." Is this a real name in any way? Pretty sure said friend was not Jewish and was going undercover, ala Melanie Griffith in A Stranger Among Us.