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Interests: Alfons Mucha, Archibald Leach, big words, Bob Hicok, Brian Eno, Cat Power, Charles Bukowski, Charlotte Masaryk, cheese, clarity, dark chocolate, David Byrne, David Foster Wallace, Dorothy Parker, Douglas Adams, Edna St. Vincent Millay, E.E. Cummings, Frank O’Hara, Fred Rogers, garlic, Gaudi, Gertrude Stein, ginger, Gustav Klimt, Iva Pekarkova, Jane Austen, Jaromir Nohavica, Jeanette Winterson, Josef Skvorecky, Joseph Campbell, Joss Whedon, Just a Minute, Kate Bush, Kurt Vonnegut, laughing until it hurts, Laurie Anderson, Leonard Cohen, little kids singing, Lloyd Alexander, mandarin oranges, making lists, Margaret Atwood, Miss Manners, New Yorker, Paul Simon, performance, P.G. Wodehouse, poetry, Rebecca Solnit, Rob Brezsny, Robert Anton Wilson, Robert Creeley, salt, Salvador Dali, secrets, silence, Star Trek, Stephen Dunn, Talking Heads, Terry Gilliam, things that stain, This American Life, Tom Waits, T.S. Eliot, vegetable juice, veiled cultural references, vinegar, water, wine, W.H. Auden

i’m in yr time zone, soakin in yr culture

I’m in New York hanging with my friend G while Squire Tuck is off doing some grandparent/child bonding thing upstate. I assume our young Squire is having a good time, but I suspect I’m having a better time. During the day, G’s in school and I work on his adorable little laptop (how DO people work on laptops? I feel like I’m used to being the captain of a starship with my giant desk and my wave keyboard and suddenly I’m like trapped in some bitty shuttle craft), which is not a blast, BUT in the evening we whirlwindily do New York Stuff. We walked through Central Park, we went to the Met and looked at marble dudes, we watched a sunset off a pier, we saw Xanadu!, we had very schmancy drinks in an unmarked bar, I smoked a cigarette on a stoop, and I’m not telling you the half of it. I got Squire a t-shirt from the Natural History Museum. I think we’ll keep the fact that I went to the circus just between ourselves, though, okay, or he’ll never let me out of his sight again. I have FUN when I travel, I’m saying.

We were in Washington D.C. for a few days, hanging with family and making sure my tear ducts are fully functional. They are! In addition to Standard Familial Strife, things that made me cry were: watching Barbara Morgan on the live feed, Mr. Rogers’ red sweater, seeing the ghost dance dresses, that giant Calder mobile, and the fact that the Smithsonian is free. Best and worst of America, all right there. I wanted to kiss a flag and burn it at the same time, and even that conflict made me feel more American than I have in a long time, and more at peace with it.

The day before I left I found out somebody had been copying my writing here and passing them off as her own. This caused me quite a bit of –I don’t want to say I was angry, but I certainly was confused. Why would you want to pretend to be someone else, have someone else’s life, in an online journal? It is ever so strange. And it stirred up some stuff for me, like Why Do I Write and What Is This Thing Called Blog and so on. But then I had a plane to catch so I couldn’t really work it out.

Anyway, that’s how we roll. Hope you’re having fun where you are, too.

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4 responses to “i’m in yr time zone, soakin in yr culture”

  1. pam Avatar
    pam

    THIS is a truly brilliant summation of what happens when you come back to the US after being abroad:
    “I wanted to kiss a flag and burn it at the same time, and even that conflict made me feel more American than I have in a long time, and more at peace with it.”
    Wow.
    Also, theft, the sincerest form of flatter and all that.

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  2. Marketa Avatar
    Marketa

    Ahoj z Bruselu, kde uz je zase podzim. Leto bylo asi 3 dny. Budu v Brne budu 31.8. a 2.9. Zdravim celou rodinu a Jeffryho. M.

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  3. ozma Avatar
    ozma

    I wonder if I’d have to live outside the country before I’d ever have the urge to kiss the flag. Burn it–I’ve got that one daily–particularly now.
    Maybe she wants your life, not just your writing. She is pretending to have your life?

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  4. Strange Proportion Avatar
    Strange Proportion

    You are only forgiven for not telling us you would be in DC because we happened to be in Oaxaca at the same time.
    Next time, though, we will expect to see you and the squire at least once. We miss you.

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