5 October 2002

I've had Ben Folds Five's Alice Childress song in my head since yesterday morning, so I'm listening to the whole self-titled album, and dang, is it good. I love these guys. Or maybe it's just Ben Folds I like. I guess we'll find out as soon as I get one of his solo albums. In the meantime, I'm sitting here in my pajamas grooving, "Uuuunderground, uuuunderground, ooooooh!" But the line from the Alice Childress song keeps chasing around my head: "I think about my friends -- sometimes I wish they lived out here, but they wouldn't dig this town." Well, yeah. Nobody really digs Hayward. It's not a really diggable town.

The larger sense of town -- well, yeah, they probably would dig it. Berkeley, Palo Alto. The ones who've visited have enjoyed their visits. Long-term diggage, I don't know. Depends on the friend. I mean, obviously my friends who plan to keep living here dig it....

The Twins lost yesterday, and I thought, well, maybe it's not they who play better on their home field. Maybe it's just me. Maybe I was just projecting on that one. Or maybe they'll surge back in Game 4. We'll see, I guess. I asked Timprov what he'd do if the Cards (his other favorite team) and the Twinkies made the Series. I meant, "Who would you cheer for?" He said, "Try to get tickets and make your mom really jealous." Fair enough. (But the Angels beat the damnYankees. Woo!)

Yesterday's BART trip back from David's just looked dystopian to me. Don't know why today in particular, because I often enjoy the hills and the bay. But this time -- well, for one thing, there's just too many people in this city. Just too many. As far as you can see, there's more people, and even when Mount Tam's visible in the distance, you can tell people are crawling all over it like hiking rats.

Hiking rats. See? This is the sort of thing I come up with in bad moods. I'm not really in one right now. Not like yesterday late afternoon. I did my yoga and spent the rest of the afternoon getting dizzy, blacking out around the edges etc. This is not so good, I'm thinking. So now I'm looking at Yoga Journal's website at what's counterindicated for low blood pressure. A lot of stuff. Mountain pose. You know, the one that's just standing up? Drat. So now I have to figure out how to tell when I'm having a really low blood pressure day before I do the yoga.

I wanted to hang out with Zed, all of a sudden, yesterday early evening. Mark hadn't called to say he was coming home yet, and I thought, oh, dang, it'd be really nice to have a cup of tea and just talk to Zed a minute before I have to make dinner. And then I thought, stupid Bay Area. (Because Berkeley is 45 minutes from here on the train, which makes last minute brief gatherings rather less than brief, so I didn't even check with Zed.) And then I laughed at myself, because it would be even harder to hang out with Zed on short notice if I didn't live in the Bay Area.

Unless he started behaving like C.J. and showing up in strange cities with less than 24 hours' notice, of course. Not that I'd complain about another spontaneous Ceej appearance, mind you, but we'll see him soon. I'd say "soon enough," but I'm not sure that it is. I may have imploded from the anticipation of going to Minneapolis before then.

We're not the kind of family that worries much about kids living out parents' dreams. I don't think my folks had very specific dreams for me. But I feel pretty sure that if a time traveler had told my mom at 24 that 24 years later, she'd be spending time with her own 24-year-old daughter in late October in Minneapolis, maybe eating in the deli at Dayton's and wandering around downtown or by the lakes, that would have sounded pretty idyllic to her. Sounds pretty idyllic to me, too. (Of course, I'm not sure she would have responded well to, "You'll live in Omaha at the time, and your baby girl will be living in California." Sometimes time travelers need to know when to keep their mouths shut.) I'm all puppyish about this: "And then maybe I can have coffee! And smell the air!"

Anyway. I finished Stay yesterday, and it was good, worth reading, still not as good as The Blue Place. And she did this thing that really annoyed me: she kept saying what Aud rhymed with. (Aud was the main character's name.) But it didn't, I mean, only sort of. "Crowd," for example. It's as close a rhyme as you're going to find in English, but the d is different with a Norwegian accent. It has both edges on it, the front and the back edge. English words sound funny when you put the back edge of a d on them. I think I'd have been a bit annoyed with all of the "Aud rhymes with" sentences anyway. Ah well. I started Paul Scott's Staying On, which was recommended lo, these many moons ago, when I asked for stuff about India and the British, and I didn't write down who recommended it (although I think it was Philip, maybe). It's not wowing me so far, but it's an interesting enough book. Worth finishing

I'm also reading part of Avi's book for my next writers' group meeting, and of course working on my own book. We don't have much in the way of plans for this weekend, I don't think. There's an idiot on our street corner with a megaphone, but I can't quite catch what he's saying, just that he's saying something. I still don't feel like eating. I don't know. I think I'll be able to enjoy this weekend, in a low-key way. Mostly I'm trying to get the Alice Childress song out of my head in favor of "Video": "I can't wait 'til the future gets here...."