I Had a Dream

My mind has been too busy to let me sleep. My unconscious is growing fleurs du mal. I had a dream of a man who ate himself to death, because he had lost his wife. He ate himself to death by cooking all of her favorite foods and eating them every night, including a whole chocolate cake. He grew a head the size of a boat, in the shape of a bread loaf, and then he died. His wife died when they went on a melancholy walk on the beach. She weighed 300 pounds. The surf caught her by the ankles and tossed her about. She was too fat to help herself get on her feet and she was too heavy for her husband to save her. So she drowned in the shallow end.

La Chamade

I read two beautiful books in a row where the protagonists do absolutely nothing. And I felt such kinship, because that's my natural inclination, too. Not so much these days, as I speed from daycare to work to Fresh n Easy and back, but looking at my life as a whole, I was much like Pauline in "La Chamade", living only for love and books, or maybe Graham in "The Informants," lounging at the beach, the meeting friends for dinner and drugs. It's a perversion of the Zen idea of just "being," as it's more like wasting, thick with lethargy and idleness.

Wayfarers

If I were a Joan Didion type, the recent apocalyptic fires and heat waves in California would have inspired me to write about the strange effects on Angelenos, the ash on the street and the yellow halo around downtown L.A. As it was, I just shut the doors, ran the AC, went to bed at 7:30 p.m. and scratched my eczema, longing for cool, dark German forests. Now I have emerged and realized I survived the summer completely without Wayfarers. And this while reading "The Informants," where the word Wayfarer appears on every third page. In fact, I was relieved I didn't buy any when all the idiot kids on the season premiere of "90210" sported turquoise, pink and yellow versions. Gag me with a spoon. Like, totally.

Quiet Little Place

"Abort" say the toilet at A's house. It's an old-fashioned word for WC. Another word is "quiet little place."

That's Our Blacky!

My brother's cat has been disappearing tons. Twelve hours at a time. Not eating. Lots of throwing away of food. This weekend, my brother's girlfriend saw the cat walk up a wooden staircase to an apartment and disappear. She knocked. Have you seen a black cat? she asked. Oh, you mean our Blacky? they said, Yes he's here! What the fuck said K. That's our Otti! Turns out they had adopted him. Last night the lady said she thought a third party must be involved. Because Blacky isn't sleeping there nights, and he's not sleeping at my brother's either. So he must be sleeping somewhere. Ungrateful thing.

Germany

Thunderstorms. Currywurst. Pear Champagne. Schwimmbad. Fashion Don'ts. Cloud Forest. Ancient Ruins. Maultaschen. Pretty horses. The old toilet in the bar I used to work at when I was 16. Tuerschluessel. Abort. A und A. Fokuhilas. Lachanfaelle. Good newspapers. Labello. Lots of cake. And croissants. And wine. And sparkling rosés. Mosquito attacks. Greek food.

Turtles Don't Live Forever

I should be cleaning the turtle cage, so that the other one, the one that lived, doesn't also die like its little buddy. I really thought that turtles, unless they're made into soup in France, live forever.