She is very beautiful.

People are different ways with different people. Different people bring out different sides of other people, in ways other people cannot bring out those differences themselves.

She is very beautiful, and possesses a sort of rare elegance, despite her unkept hair and funny outfits. She glides when she walks, radiates when she smiles, tells quirky stories that makes everyone, especially herself, laugh. I watch her when I can; I wish I could just understand where it all comes from.

For me, she is champagne and roses.

"My hand would be the correct size."

At airports everyone is more beautiful. Their clothes are new and they wear sneakers, which are more comfortable for travel.

There are no dirty people at airports. Sometime the people at airports are disheveled, from their travels, but they are never dirty.

My grandmother got in the coffin with my grandfather. It took fifteen minutes to get her out. She had just had her knees fixed--the fluid drained, a synthetic ball and socket installed, ligaments made of plastic and rubber. She had been a hurdler in her youth.

I saw a man today who had a fake arm. I was at the mall, not the airport, and I was riding the escalator up. I saw him, for a moment only, as he was walking on the level below.

It was a professionally manufactured prosthetic arm, and was cast in the peach color they use. He was wearing a long-sleeved shirt, so only the hand was visible. The hand was very small.

The man was about 5'10," medium build, perhaps 34, 36 years old. But the hand he had, which was resting diagonally across his midriff, just below his heart, was not the size a hand should have been for a man of his size.

It was a child's hand. Then he walked into a store.

The conveyors that people walk on in airports should be used on city streets. Everyone could walk to work, dozens and dozens of blocks, and it wold take not time at all. The city could even charge people to use such the conveyor. The conveyor could be called the ConveyorWalk. The ConveyorWalk would look fantastic--all these people, walking so fast they would seem to be flying, outside, on the sidewalk, under a sky with white clouds.

The hand was so small, delicate, the fingers almost wispy. But why? If one were to go to the trouble of purchasing a prosthetic arm, one for show only--for I imagine there are no medical benefits to a prosthesis--they why buy a small one?

My thoughts:

- He has had the prosthetic arm since he was a boy, and keeps it for sentimental reasons.

-He has had the prosthetic arm since he was a boy, and cannot afford to replace it.

-He does not know it is too small."

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From Jokes Told in Heaven about Babies, by Lucy Thomas

What about Brian?

Last night I had a dream about Brian. In the dream, everytime Kat and I ran into Brian (which was frequently), he was extremely rude to both of us, refusing to say hello or good-bye, or even acknowledge that we were there, despite attmepts on our part to strike up a conversation. In fact, he seemed extremely annoyed that we even tried to talk to him. In real life, I don't know Brian that well, but this behavior seems highly unlikely of him, leading me to believe the dream was more about Katherine than it was about Brian. But even more likely, I think the dream was really about the pet gorilla that was allowed to run wild around the office complex we were visiting, and about the escaped boa constrictor that looked alot like an extremely large sea cucumber. When the two animals happened upon each other, it was a playful game of "look what I found!" until the boa constrictor decided to bite the gorilla's leg. (Now I know boa constrictors don't bite, but this one did, and also, the gorilla looked alot like a horse.)

Library Lust

"I long for labyrinthine libraries in which books disappear for decades and then suddenly surface like logs breaking loose from the murky bottom of a Scottish loch. I long to wander through subterranean vaults, plucking tomes, topped by a mat of dust (the remains of old professors, perhaps), that have not been read in 200 years of library residency: wallflowers waiting for me to choose them and use them as I please....

In 20 years, college students will regard books the way they now regard 33 RPM records: a quaint technology, warmer perhaps, but ultimately the province of musty antiquarians....

When that day comes, I suppose I'll be one of those dirty old men, white-bearded like Whitman, poking around in the stacks of derelict libraries, caressing the spines, perusing the neglected volumes, and contemplating how his desire for books only increases with age."


Excerpts from "Red Hot Library Lust," Chronicle of Higher Education, 16 February 2007: