Required reading for all Californians. If you have any hankering for a literary/historical whirlwind romance or any desire for some of that solid gold perspective, read this book. You can have my copy. It reminded me of the end of Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure, where they get on stage at San Dimas High and romp you through history with the the figures they gathered.

Required reading for all human beings. It only takes 45 minutes! This was my first taste of Mark Twain, and I guess I'm on the bandwagon now.

the daring young man on the flying trapeze

I first heard it quietly while we were making salad more than two years ago, Nicki singing, mumbling really, under her breath.

He flies through the air with the greatest of ease; the daring young man on the flying trapeze.

Like the time Peter said sit down Jo or the time my Dad said which would you rather be or a wasp, the words cemented in my memory and in spite of their blandness they have never faded. And then this Saroyan inserts himself into the situation; he liked those words too, and he woke up each day in San Francisco too, and hey hey hey:

He (the living) dressed and shaved, grinning at himself in the mirror. Very unhandsome, he said; where is my tie? (He had but one.) Coffee and a gray sky, Pacific Ocean fog, the drone of a passing streetcar, people going to the city, time again, the day, prose and poetry. He moved swiftly down the stairs to the street and began to walk, thinking suddenly, It is only in sleep that we may know that we live. There only, in that living death, do we meet ourselves and the far earth, God and the saints, the names of our fathers, the substance of remote moments; it is there that the centuries merge in the moment, that the vast becomes the tiny, tangible atom of eternity.

He walked into the day as alertly as might be, making a definite noise with his heels, perceiving with his eyes the superficial truth of streets and structures, the trivial truth of reality. Helplessly his mind sang, He flies through the air with the greatest of ease; the daring young man on the flying trapeze; then laughed with all the might of his being. It was really a splendid morning; gray, cold, and cheerless, a morning for inward vigor; ah, Edgar Guest, he said, how I long for your music.

And then:

If the truth were known, he was half starved, and yet there was still no end of books he ought to read before he died. He remembered the young Italian in a Brooklyn hospital, a small sick clerk named Mollica, who had said desperately, I would like to see California once before I die. And he thought earnestly, I ought at least to read Hamlet once again, or perhaps Huckleberry Finn.

I wonder what his final count was when he died, and whether he was anywhere near satisfied with it, and whether that's possible.

what dreams may come

To be, or not to be - that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And by opposing end them. To die, to sleep
No more, and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to. 'Tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep,
To sleep - perchance to dream - ay, there's the rub,
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil
Must give us pause. There's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life.
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
Th' oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of th' unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered country, from whose bourn
No traveler returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pitch and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry
And lose the name of action.

A new dimension to the pill. What worse reality might the placid life hold?

Nat

Sometimes I think she'd look at me today and be sick with disappointment.

Fair enough, I'd say, but you try living in this head.

Sox

Rest in peace old boy!

E P I C

Today: Rewarded for being a tennis fan. As heartbreaking as those last five minutes were, I can't help but be pleased with this, with blowing scores of records out of the water, with an old hack emerging as a formidable, respectable, and lovable tennis force, with McEnroe rabbiting on an on to fill the blessed silence with his largely useless commentary, with family constantly placing and breaking bet upon bet, with Benny echoing my joy and my disgust from afar, with 138mph second serves, with nerves ground down to their bitter nubs after a THIRTY-GAME LONG fifth set, and finally, with this rare, beautiful, unbridled enthusiasm for nothing but tennis.

Federer (2) def Roddick (6) 5-7 7-6(8-6) 7-6(7-5) 3-6 16-14

love fifteen :)

And Another

I started up a Rwanda blog because I do not want the internet to forget that I was here. Visit please! These blogs will be existing in tandem like icily civil stepsisters for the next six months, after which In Rwanda will take over full time and Big Beautiful Tasteless will be gently euthanized.