An Open Letter

To A , A , & N :

You ruined my confidence.

Thanks for nothing.

Colin

I stared through the windshield at the trees in front of me. I didn't see the trees, but I stared nonetheless. If I had seen the trees, I might have thought to myself: "Those trees seem to go on forever. Those trees are never-ending." But, like I said, I didn't see them.

I didn't see them because my mind was elsewhere. Or maybe my mind wasn't anywhere at all. Perhaps my mind had stepped out for a moment to get some air. I don't know.

What I do know is this:
I saw nothing and felt nothing. I tasted and smelled nothing. All I did was hear, and what I heard was the ocean. I heard the sound of a wave rolling in and crashing on the beach. I heard another wave do the very same thing. Then I was underwater, and the waves were crashing over me. The dull, rhythmic, muddy roar of the ocean surrounded me. Between swells, I heard momentarily peaceful saltwater burble around my head and past my ears. It was wonderful. I was nowhere near an ocean.



A voice was speaking. I could hear the voice--knew that it was a voice--but couldn't hear any words. Didn't want to hear any words. As the voice grew louder, the roar of the ocean began to fade. And as the roar faded, a remarkably desperate disappointment filled me up.

"--wanna come with?" It was my brother's voice. I had no idea what he was talking about. I responded accordingly.

"What?"

"I said, do you wanna come with?" My window was rolled down. He was standing outside, looking in at me.

"Come with where?"

My brother stared at me through the open window for a few moments. "Did you hear anything I just said?"

"No. What did you say?"

"I'm gonna hike up to the viewpoint and take some pictures. The sign says it's just a half-mile up. So...do you wanna come with?"

"Okay...yeah, I do. You go ahead, though, and I'll meet you up there in a couple minutes."

"I can wait for you. I'm not in a hurry."

"No, it's cool. I'll be right behind you."

"Okay." He was speaking slowly now, carefully. He looked weird. That is, he looked at me weird, like he thought I was acting funny. (I was.) "I'll see you up there, then."

"See you up there."

My brother walked away.



I tried to go back to the ocean, but I couldn't. I wanted to be underwater again. I wanted more waves to wash over me. But I couldn't. And they wouldn't.

After ten minutes of trying and failing, I rolled up my window, locked the door, walked up the path, and found my brother. He took my picture. I took his picture. Through the lens of his camera I saw mountains and wildflowers and rocks and birds and glaciers and trees.

And yes, they were beautiful.

Found Phrases*

"Alcohol. Ravioli. Sexy. Erotic."

"And food consumption in Italy?"

"who CARUSO"

It's becoming clearer & clearer

that most of the girls I really give a shit about

don't really give a shit about me.

Which isn't to say that they aren't kind

or that they don't care about me.

Most of them are.

And most of them do.

But come on,

let's face it:

I'm not looking for kindness & caring.

We all know that.

The Return

Tomorrow morning, I will begin driving back to Washington from Georgia.  10 days, 9 nights on the road.

Click here to check out a map of my basic route--all the major overnight stops, none of the minor details.

To all my Georgians: I can't begin to express how sad I feel about leaving.  I miss you already.

To all my Washingtonians: It's been so long!  I look forward to seeing you all soon.

To Everybody: I love you.

Because I know the feeling, even if I don't feel it now.

IT'S RAINING IN LOVE

by Richard Brautigan

I don't know what it is,

but I distrust myself

when I start to like a girl

      a lot.

It makes me nervous.

I don't say the right things

or perhaps I start

       to examine,

             evaluate,

                   compute

       what I am saying.

If I say, "Do you think it's going to rain?"

and she says, "I don't know,"

I start thinking: Does she really like me? 

In other words

I get a little creepy. 

A friend of mine once said,

"It's twenty times better to be friends

      with someone

than it is to be in love with them." 

I think he's right and besides,

it's raining somewhere, programming flowers

and keeping snails happy.

      That's all taken care of.

                   BUT 

if a girl likes me a lot

and starts getting real nervous

and suddenly begins asking me funny questions

and looks sad if I give the wrong answers

and she says things like,

"Do you think it's going to rain?"

and I say, "It beats me,"

and she says, "Oh,"

and looks a little sad

at the clear blue California sky,

I think: Thank God, it's you, baby, this time

       instead of me.

[Stuck in my head tonight: "Act Naturally" by The Beatles.]

Dye a log.

"See, I learned early on that it doesn't pay to be a good person.  There's a line in Catch-22 that reads, 'The Texan was generous, good-natured, likable.  No one could stand him after three days.' Well that's not it exactly, but it's something like that.  But it's true! The more good a person is, the quicker everyone gets sick of them."

"You've read Catch-22?"

"Yeah.  Three times.  Why, are you surprised?  You think I'm dumb or something?"

"No, I don't think you're dumb.  Take it easy.  But yeah, I'm a little surprised.  You've just never really struck me as, uh, bookish."

"I've only read the first half.  That line is from the very first chapter, actually.  But I have read the first half three times.  That part was true, for what it's worth."

"Okay.  So maybe I was right about you not being much of a reader."

"Half-right, I guess. [laughing] But you get my point, right?  About people getting sick of good people more quickly than they get sick of the Average Joe?"

"Yeah, I think I do.  It's sort of like the whole 'nice guys finish last' thing.  But raised to a more universal level.  Really ground-breaking shit. [laughing]"

"Yeah. [laughing] Exactly.  Nice guys, good people, finish last because no one can stand to hang around a person who is so obviously better than everyone else.  Not that all good people advertise their goodness, or even try to be good.  They just can't really help themselves. I mean, goodness is rarely viewed as a negative thing.  For obvious reasons.  But let's be honest, it gets annoying."

"Even if someone can tolerate excessive goodness, if they don't find it annoying, a person who constantly does the right thing is inherently predictable.  And predictability is always boring.  Not to mention that hanging around with a good person makes you look bad by comparison.  Nobody wants to come off looking or sounding like a dick just because the dude standing next to them happens to be a goddamned saint!  It's not fair, you know?"

"I don't mind looking like a dick.  Not one bit.  Sure, there are pitfalls, but in the long run the benefits vastly outweigh the costs.  Think about it.  We're both pretty nice guys, all things considered.  But if we didn't pull some asshole moves every now and then, we'd be plain old boring annoying good guys.  After three days, no one would be able to stand us.  

Good people have it way harder than we do, man.  Mild dickishness is a blessing in disguise.  You can quote me on that."

"You're absolutely right.  And I will quote you."

"Word.  

Thank you."

Denis Johnson's Tree of Smoke.

I finally finished reading Tree of Smoke last week. Took me long enough (I'm ashamed to admit that I tend to be a pathetically slow reader). Tree of Smoke is the latest novel from Denis Johnson, who is probably my favorite "active" writer. Simply put, I believe ToS to be a great novel, worthy of a significant devotion of time and study; a big part of me felt ready to start reading the book again from the beginning as soon as I had read the last word (I didn't).

While reading, I found myself underlining and dog-earring noteworthy phrases, sentences, and passages throughout the book. Sometimes the selections expressed ideas which piqued my interest but, more often than not, I simply liked the way the words read. Johnson really has a way with language; there is a lot of satisfaction to be found in reading the way he strings words together, even before you've made sense of what it all means.

By the way, the book takes place during the Vietnam War. It's not about the Vietnam War, though. Not specifically, at least. Of course much is said about the war, but ToS isn't really a war story. Arguably. Anyway, the context is important.

---

In fact he was no longer persuaded that blood and revolution made useful tools for altering the concepts in a person's mind. Who said it?--probably Confucius--"I can't beat a sculpture from stone with a sledgehammer; I can't free the soul of a man with violence." Peace was here, peace was now. Peace promised in any other time or place was a lie.

"Get in there. Have intercourse with snakes. Eat human flesh. Learn everything."
"That's pretty broad."

Dickens called human hope a thing "as universal as death."

He busied himself recovering to the third dimension the flattened cardboard boxes.

"It ain't never tomorrow, not in this fucking movie. Never ain't nothing but today."

...the roosters alone on neighboring farms began to scream like humans...

"You got one of them crawly-caterpillar mustaches."

She looked magical...

[A]round them loitered ducks and chickens, huge water buffalo, fawn-colored, starved-looking Brahman cattle, bag-of-bones ponies, all behaving as if war were impossible.

"Be alive."

"We can't win like this. Our young foot soldier this morning phrased it correctly. This shit ain't funny no more. This shit is a mess. This shit has got to stop."

"What's this now--no cigars?"
"Some days they taste a little scummy. You still don't smoke."
"No."
"Don't start." He smoked. "It's a war, Skip."
"I understand."

They threw hand grenades through doorways and blew the arms and legs off ignorant farmers, they rescued puppies from starvation and smuggled them home to Mississippi in their shirts, they burned down whole villages and raped young girls, they stole medicine by the jeepload to save the lives of orphans.

James leaned close and looked down into the sarge's eyes. Eyelashes shellacked together by tears, radiating out in a burst, as in a child's drawing. Beautiful blue eyes. If they were a woman's you couldn't stop looking at them.

"Don't be smart about it. The Holy Spirit's been battering away at the souls of the men in this family for generations. But do you think he's ever made so much as a dent?"
"Yeah--you know what? Maybe the Holy Spirit ain't so holy."
"What on earth do you mean?"
"You been to Oklahoma, ain't you, and Arizona. And that's all."
"What do you mean by saying that?"
"I don't know. Just you need to get around a little more, before you start talking about the Holy Spirit."
"James, do you go to church?"
"No."
"James, do you pray?"
"To who?"
His mother began to weep.
"Woman, let me tell you about the Holy Spirit. He's crazy."

He dreamed a great deal each night. It felt like work. Sleeping made him tired.

"I don't want home leave."
"Don't you want to see home?"
"This war is my home."

"There's no shame in hating, son, not in a war."
"I ain't your son."
"Forgive the presumption."

The rain stopped. Across the road in front of a small house a young woman played peekaboo with a child just walking, who lurched on tiptoes while a slightly older sister danced a solitary improvisation, with sweeping, parallel gestures of her arms, all three of them smiling as if the world went no farther than their happiness.

"I said I wouldn't mind," she said, and they commenced with an awkward kiss.
"Mr. Benét, do you have any wine?"
"I do. Thank God, I do. And half a fifth of Bushmills."
"Sounds like a party," she said, and laid two fingers lightly on his forearm. Taking the fingers in his hand, he led her to the double-sized bed, where he put to use what he'd learned from Henry Miller's daring passages, from small obscene photographs, dorm-room bull sessions. As in the time in Damulog, they didn't speak. Everything they did was a secret, especially from each other. As she'd said, she didn't mind, and at the very last part she gazed upward at something on the ceiling and cried out. And for an instant he thought, I am James Bond, before he dropped again into gray doubting--Artaud and Cioran, the dog, the weather, the point of it all, waiting for contact with a supposed double agent, the thing he'd been brought here nearly two years ago to accomplish. And it was folly. The wild-card operation and the war itself--folly on folly. And this woman beside him with whom he'd just made love, perspiring like a handball player.

"Then listen to my grandmother. She always told us, Don't scatter your kindness in the forest. Plant them where they'll grow and feed you."

With the side of her foot, she kicked the dirt into the whole, careful to get as little as possible on her sandal. Her husband stared at this operation as if wishing he could grow tiny and throw himself in.

The double had arrived.

Skip watched the road beyond the gate. Not thinking about is mother at all. He supposed he'd think about her later. He couldn't predict the order of the these emotional events, his mother had never died before.

"I know from experience that life is suffering, and that suffering comes from clinging to things that won't stay."

"Uncle Ho won't catch us sleeping! We are absolutely thoroughly prepared for one year ago."

People die when you're thinking of someone else. That's the way of it.

When Sands learned of it he was out behind the villa watching three young boys harry a water buffalo from its rest in a mudhole across the creek. [...] A woman, their mother, someone in authority, appeared from the blossoming bougainvillea above them and tempted the beast with a swatch of greens, and like some geologic fact it developed massively out of the ooze.

And I thought, well, that is a poem. A poem doesn't have to rhyme. It just has to remind you of things and wring them out of you.

The King of Cao Phuc. Psy Ops. Labyrinth. And the Tree of Smoke.

Fest missed his family altogether. And why not?--the old man's death had made him mawkish and philosophical. At first the news had rocked him, but he'd quickly adjusted to a loss so long expected. A few days later sorrow attacked him again as he realized the old man was still dead. As if some part of him had believed his father could die and later one could visit him and talk about it.

"Skip, you're not expected to behave when being questioned by the enemy. We're not the enemy."
Skip said, "'Enemy' is no longer a term I'd use in any case. Ever."

James said, "You took a suicide run."
"Yeah. Sure did."
"I been on a couple runs like that."
"Yeah."
"Hey. You still got your gun? You want me to shoot you?"
The man looked dapper in a tweed sort of sports jacket over a thin beige sweater, pale blue pajama bottoms, and flimsy cloth house slippers. He took a reflective drag on his cigarette. "I left the gun at home," he said.

At the edge of a burning field once he'd found a dead dog with newborn pups at her teats, and he'd taken the minuscule beasts home and tried to nurse them from an eyedropper. That's who he'd been once.

--read until his focus loosened and the lines of text divided into duplicates and floated on the page.

"Unwrinkle your soul, man. You ain't dead."

The men hooted encouragement while he tied his laces and as he climbed the path and until he was out of sight watched him possessively, as if they'd fashioned him and sent him forth.

The letter comprised several--many--handwritten notebook pages folded around a four-by-six snapshot: dozens of people and their wild miscellaneous luggage surrounding a Filipino jeepney with one of its rear wheels removed. Every face smiling, every chest expanded with pride, as if they'd just brought down the vehicle with spears.

"Memories used to come like beestings, ouch, out of nowhere, but now they don't come. But sometimes I get such an urgent, this urgent--feeling."
"I see...Or no, I don't."
"This fist just grabs me by the heart and yanks at me like a dog telling me, 'Come on, come on'--"
"Well, I guess that's, that's--well--understandable, in a way. And--"
"I don't know you well enough to talk like this, do I?"


[No song today, I'm sorry to say. My mind is all muddy with the written word now. Sorry.]

Language matters.

If you give a crap about language, check out this incredible website:

http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/errors.html#errors

This deceptively simple page is called "Common Errors in English".  It is a pretty darn comprehensive collection of, you guessed it, common errors made by English-speaking and writing human beings.  I've been aware of the site for no more than five minutes and I've already learned of two mistakes I've been committing for years.

Big-ups to Washington State University English professor Paul Brians for posting this indispensable guide to the language we all frig up on a daily basis.

(That's right, he's a WSU prof.  My mom would be so proud of my open-mindedness.  But only after she celebrated/flaunted the merits of her Cougar brethren.)

[Stuck in my head: nothing right now, but yesterday morning I woke up with Modest Mouse's "The View" firmly lodged in my brain.  Which is strange, because I hadn't heard so much as one note of a MM song for a long, long while.  But lo and behold, there it was.  Enjoy.]

PS: More, better content coming soon.  Stay tuned, mes amis.

Pictures in my head.

I often see pictures in my head.  I don't even need to close my eyes.

The pictures are diverse and many.  Fresh pictures enter my head each day, whether I acknowledge their existence or not.  Some of them move.  Many are still.

Only the most recurrent pictures are retrievable on command.  The vast majority surface then are lost until they choose to rise again.  I am sure that countless pictures have surfaced once, been forgotten, and are now gone forever.  Fine by me.

One day these pictures will be born out of my mind into the Greater Consciousness.  Of this I am certain.  

It has been my experience that one man's certainty rarely counts for much.  So where does that leave my pictures?

[Stuck in my head tonight: "I'm Looking Through You" by The Beatles.]

Skateboarding.

So last night was my short night off.  Tonight's my loooooooooong night off.  And I'm pumped on it.  Got off work at 4pm, don't work again until 330pm tomorrow afternoon, so that means I'll be up until the wee hours tonight.  Just like I like it!

For those of you who don't know, I used to skateboard.  I know, hard to imagine, right?  Chubby, goofy kid like me on wheels?  Not the most obvious pairing.

But growing up in Elma, there wasn't much to do after school.  Instead of taking the usual small-town teenager route of getting high, drunk, or both to kill time, I went skateboarding.  I still consider the hours spent skateboarding with my homeys in Elma some of the happiest of my life.

The Middle School bank.  The Mormon Church.  The Credit Union.  The High School steps.  These were just a few of our local spots back in the day.  Occasionally we'd make it down to Aberdeen High School or the Aberdeen skatepark.  Even more rarely, we'd make it up to Olympia to skate the Evergreen campus and Garfield Elementary.  Good f___ing times, man.

Before you ask, no, I was never very good.  But that didn't matter much.  It was fun.  And when you get right down to it, fun's really the name of this whole big game, right?

Anyway, I've spent the better part of three hours tonight watching skateboard videos on theberrics.com.  The Berrics, for the record, is a private indoor skatepark in LA, built, owned and run by skate legends Steve Berra and Eric Koston.  As far as I can tell from watching the videos, it's where basically every pro skateboarder in the whole friggin' world goes to hang out and just skate with friends when they're in LA.  Just watching these videos has reminded me how much fun it is to just hang out and skate.  Skateboarding itself is fun enough, but even when you're off the board, hanging out with other skateboarders is rad in itself.  Just take a peek at some of the videos from The Berrics to get a taste.

Long story short, I want to start skating again.  And if I can scrape together enough money to buy a new skateboard without feeling guilty about spending the little dough I have on a new skateboard, I fully intend to do it.  I know what you're thinking:

"Colin, do you really think taking up skateboarding again is the best use of your time?  I mean, you're 23, make very little money, are a bit of a free-loader, and have been a college grad for more than two years (and without much to show for it)!  Don't you think it's time you grew up a little and got yourself, you know, a haircut?  And a real job?"

Yes, readers, I think that all the time.  I need to do something with my life.  But skateboarding's fun!  And it's relatively cheap, not to mention good exercise.  C'mon, get behind me on this!

Believe me, I think about my future ad nauseum; a healthy, youthful distraction like skateboarding isn't going to screw up my priorities.  It's just gonna make me happy.

Enough about that.  Here's what else I did today:

• Worked 8 hours at the bookstore.
• Made dinner for Megan and Chris.  I'd been thinking about taking a culinary trip down memory lane for a while; tonight was the night.  Fishsticks and tater tots, baby!  All of us were reminded of childhood.
• Drank 3 Piggly Wiggly Diet Colas.  Currently working on #4.  Booyah.
• Read more of Denis Johnson's Tree of Smoke.  The book is terrific, but I've been reading it super slowly.  I shall finish it soon, I promise.  Some sort of report will be posted.  Get psyched.  (If you've never read/heard of Johnson, pick up Jesus' Son with a quickness.  You won't regret it.  Best active writer I'm aware of, hands down.)
• Other stuff I can't recall now.

Okay, that's all for now, folks.  I want to quickly point out that I won't be posting boring day-in-the-life stuff like this everyday.  I'll get back to the more interesting content soon enough, I assure you.  I just need a few days to properly prepare all my Earth-shaking ideas for presentation.  I hope you'll bear with me.

Until next time: Have fun, Everybody.

[Stuck in my head today: "Hang Wire" by the Pixies.]

Late to rise, early to bed. (Isn't that how the saying goes?)

It's 10:10pm EST.  I've been awake for less than 12 hours.  

7.84 of those hours were spent on-the-clock at work.  0.62 more were spent walking to Vinnie Van Go Go's, eating two slices of their magnificent pizza, and walking back to the bookstore.  At least 0.67 of them were spent on the road to and from work.  0.6(ish) hours went toward showering, dressing, getting-out-the-door this morning (I overslept and had to get ready quickly; good job, me).

That leaves slightly more than two hours of catching up with my sister and brother-in-law, greeting the animals, chasing the dog around the living room (I wasn't terrorizing her, Chase is her favorite game), checking my email/Facebook/MySpace/Blogger accounts, eating some leftover salad, and, now, writing this blog.  Hooray for these 2+ hours!

If I'm smart, I'll be in bed within half-an-hour.  I have to be back at work 9.3 hours from now.

If you know me very well, you know I'm a proud Night Owl.  I have a hard time getting myself to bed anytime before 2am, let alone before 11pm.  So short turnaround times like thiskill me.  I either stay up too late and suffer sleep-deprivation, or I lay down and bed and try to sleep.  I can almost guarantee that I won't be able to fall asleep tonight.  But I'm gonna give it a shot.  Wish me luck.

For the record, though this post suggests otherwise, my life has not been so deconstructed that I can break it down into a collection of categorized durations.  It was today, unfortunately, but my life as a whole is still very much a beautiful, organic, living entity.  Thank goodness for that. Should things ever become so routine that I'm able to quantify each successive day, please remove me from this world.  I refuse to live such a life.

Okay, seriously.  Bedtime.  I love and miss you all.

Crap, I still need to make a sandwich for lunch tomorrow.

[My mind's jukebox was on shuffle in a big way today.  I couldn't seem to get anything stuck in my head, even when I wanted to.  But now that I'm home, it's all Queens of the Stone Age.  I enthusiastically recommend "I Was a Teenage Hand Model".  Who am I kidding, all of their songs are great.  Try "Another Love Song" on for size, while you're at it.]

Being alone.

Two Winters ago I worked weekends as a lift operator at Stevens Pass ski area, high in Washington's beautiful Cascade Mountains.  Looking back, it was a pretty cool job, even considering the ludicrous 4.5 hour round-trip commute (1.5 in my truck, 3 on a bus).  The free season pass definitely took some of the edge off.

Most of my days were spent loading folks onto Skyline, one of the mountain's busiest lifts.  But one wonderful day I had the good fortune of being assigned to the top shack of Chair 3 (aka, 7th Heaven).

Working Top-3 was a choice assignment in my eyes for a number of reasons:

1. It's the highest top shack on the mountain, and thus the highest any lift op can ever hope to work.  The advantage of elevation: incredible views.
2. Since Chair 3 is an old, slow lift from which the only paths of descent are all double-black diamond trails, very few people ride the lift and those who do know what they're doing.  The advantage of serving only experienced riders and skiers: nobody falls down while unloading.  Ever.
3. Top-3 doubles as a Ski Patrol warming shack, so instead of dealing with the usual unruly hordes at the bottom of Skyline, the only people I had to share space with were the (mostly) cool Ski Patrol folks and Kava the Snow Dog, a black yellow lab belonging to one of the patrolmen.  The advantage of sharing space with Ski Patrol: they pretty much keep to themselves and leave you to your own devices.  The advantage of hanging out with Kava the Snow Dog: you get to hang out with Kava the Snow Dog.  Duh.

During my one and only day at the Top of 7th Heaven (easily the best work day of my entire season up at Stevens), one of the Ski Patrol ladies who stopped by the shack to have lunch asked me if I got bored or lonely hanging out up there by myself.

"Not really.  I'm pretty good at being alone.  (Pause)  I guess that probably sounds a little sad; I don't mean it to."

"No, it's not sad at all.  Feeling comfortable by yourself is a good thing."

That brief exchange has always stuck with me.  I remember how pitiful I was sure I'd sounded as soon as I declared myself "pretty good at being alone".  I mean, I definitely meant what I'd said, but admitting my unconditional acceptance of solitude to a stranger felt a bit weird.  I had confided to her something I'd never told anyone before, and I did so without thinking twice.  Her validation of my inadvertent divulgence meant the world to me.  It still means the world to me.

I couldn't pick that wonderful woman out of a two-lady lineup today.  I don't even know her name.  Funny.

[Stuck in my head today: "Between Love & Hate" by The Strokes]

Real. Adult. Feelings.

Ever wonder what goes on in the minds and hearts of 20-something Seattle men?  Is clever, occasionally nonsensical banter your idea of good fun?  Does the promise of blunt emotional honesty from the unlikeliest of sources grab your attention?  Can I interest you in a free ice cream cone?

If you answered yes to any of the above questions, you will LOVE Real Adult Feelings, the new podcast from Jason Ryan and Billy Bones.  Episode 2 just dropped, and if the first go-round was any indication, Nummer Zwei is bound to be an instant classic.

Check it out.  You won't be sorry for long.

http://realadultfeelings.tumblr.com

http://realadultfeelings.tumblr.com

http://realadultfeelings.tumblr.com

That's right.  Three (more) times.  Because it's just that good.

Typewriter.

So I've wanted to buy a typewriter for some time now--the better part of five years, probably.  Writing on a typewriter somehow seems more authentic to me than writing on a computer (a symptom of my silly yet persistent Romantic leanings, no doubt).  Central though high-technology is to my Everyday, I often find myself futilely bucking the tide of modernity(/post-modernity?/somethingelseity?).

But I haven't bought a typewriter.  Maybe I never will.  Or maybe I'll buy many, collect them.  In any event, I have instead allowed the computer to serve me; it probably does so much more effectively than any typewriter ever could.  I still feel like I'm compromising something.  So it goes.

I have a lot on my mind and my heart this evening, but nothing I'm ready to share with you all yet.  Give me some time to let tonight's thoughts and feelings marinate; I'm sure I'll come back to them.

For now, I just want to give this weblog the christening I think it deserves.  While Ain't no snob! is the first blog to which I actually posted, this was the one which brought me into the so-called blogosphere in the first place.  Let me be the first to say that it's taken me entirely too long to start the thing.  Anyway, I'm ready now.

I'd like to tell you what you might be able to look forward to, but I don't know myself quite what to expect.  All I can say with much certainty is that F/J 's subject matter will be broad, wandering, and personal.  I hope you like it.

[Quickly: I nearly always have one song or another stuck in my head.  More often than not, one song will occupy me for a day, only to be replaced by another new one the next.  So I think I'm going to try to get into the habit of including at the end of each post the song I had stuck in my head that day.  Today's song was/is "Wouldn't Mama Be Proud" by Elliott Smith.]