10-26-10 (though I could still use the money)

The issue is not with life - life is entirely blameless.

The issue is expectations. When I was a boy, I wanted fame, and money, and ease, and I now realize these desires were rather ill formed, and not particularly worthwhile.

Realizing this, and not having anything to replace the discarded goals with, I find myself at loose ends.

10-25-10 - the hutch

The white haired gentleman chats with Kevin and me while Katie goes to the bank to get the cash to pay for the hutch we've decided to buy from him for the kitchen.

"You never know what your life is gonna bring. My son died five years ago from cancer, and then my wife died a year ago from cancer."

I think about what I would do if Katie died, how lonely I would be, and all I can say is, "I'm sorry, man."

10-22-10 Fall arrives - we fight off the chill

We come home late from our respective outings, she from work, and me from rehearsal, to find the kitchen a disaster and the sink stacked with dishes, courtesy our soon-to-move-back-to-where-he's-from roommate, but we still manage to find a clean cocktail glass for Katie and a beer for me. An amaretto sour and a hefeweizen later, and we're almost ready to go to bed, dishes be damned.

Fall creeps in around the corners of the windows and beneath the doors, his cold breath chilling us, and Katie, always more susceptible to the cold than I, hugs herself for a moment before proposing the perfect solution to the quandary of undressing for bed in our chilled room. "Want to fool around?" she asks innocently.

10-21-10 The days are long, but the years are short

I wake up from a cold, dark dream of a run down home which bears a striking resemblance to my time in Queens, and I realize that today, despite all the good that has occurred, all the joy I have had in the past few months, that I am still myself.

This has a bad side, and a good side. I am still directionless, wandering my days, wondering how I can possibly achieve anything in this life where I have wasted so much time.

On the good side, I still wake up next to a beautiful woman I adore, who rolls over as I get out of bed in the darkness to begin my morning, and sleepily says, every morning without fail for the last year we've lived together, "I love you."

10-8-10 a few words on the meta-narrative

This was one of the things that really got me about the concept for this blog (sidebar: if electrons shape words, but no one reads them, do they retain the information after the computer is off?): do I write the morning after about the previous day, but date the entry for the previous day? The deal is, I write, work, think, and am more motivated to do all of those things, in the morning, but nothing's really happened so far that day. At night, I'm ready to lie down, talk with my wife (!!!), watch some TV or read something, and drift off to sleep (it's those darn morning pages I wrote all those years ago that got me in the habit, I imagine). Writing in the morning about things that have happened that day per se leads to lots of posts about commuting, which has its place, I suppose, but is not what this blog is supposed to really be about.

10-5-10 Many changes make for renewal

I haven't written in ages, mostly out of a sense of "why bother?" But since I've effectively eliminated most of my readership through neglect, I'm now utterly free. I don't have to do this because I feel obligated, or because there's something "important" for me to say. I can simply write, because I like to write, because it's fun to write, and because it makes me happy.

3-4-10 - late edition.

Last night, as I walked along Union Street, a dormer window high above the street was lit, and silhouetted in the bottom frame was a large dog. He was lit just enough by the street lamps and the ambient light of Brooklyn to see that he was white, and fluffy, with large, intelligent ears that turned before his head did while he watched the passers-by on the street below. I tried to take his picture, but the phone on my camera was insufficient to capture his curiosity, and since I was across the street, he was too far away anyway.

My mom called this assessment of the view out a window by animals "reading the newspaper" and that phrase always tickled me; just a big, white dog, reading the newspaper - late edition.