this week i

exited asia to oaxacan dinner.  heathrow airport before entry flight, i'd ordered fish tacos, those were the final mexican anythings i'll ever eat again outside of north america.  you all just haven't a friend with an honest abuela yet.  past five months: south asian food, southeast asian food, east asian food, hamburgers, pizza, french desserts.  not far from lifelong averages, except in north america triweekly mexican cuisine, maybe more varied ice cream. legend has it (modern slang for "i read the headline, didn't click the link") one australian taco shop adds raisins.  airsick bag full

calibrated at san jose day. mapquest doesn't know where the clitoris is, santa cruz will have to do. monkeys with prehensile tails: look ma, no hands!





met john on the bayou.  why does a beard equal cthulhu?  stylistically i've always wanted to look like the grinch.  rocky blue man marshmallowed the swamp from airboat christened master gator.  we listened to clown kiss cover bands at french quarter festival, faced northwest on saint ann street, agreed we'd never seen credentials on a gravestone, dreamt what angry letters to send the nobel peace prize committee, in crayon of course






 

sketched ruffles noir.  quebec city opener: your female name paul pronounced exactly like chicken.  how did that one make it through the ages?


 

read the great gatsby by f. scott fitzgerald

dinner was announced: wedging his tense arm imperatively under mine, tom buchanan compelled me from the room as though he were moving a checker to another square

"it was on the two little seats facing each other that are always the last ones left on the train.  i was going up to new york to see my sister and spend the night.  he had on a dress suit and patent leather shoes, and i couldn't keep my eyes off him, but every time he looked at me i had to pretend to be looking at the advertisement over his head.  when we came into the station he was next to me, and his white shirt-front pressed against my arm, and so i told him i'd have to call a policeman, but he knew i lied.  i was so excited that when i got into a taxi with him i didn't hardly know i wasn't getting into a subway train.  all i kept thinking about, over and over, was 'you can't live forever; you can't live forever'"

one of the men was talking with curious intensity to a young actress, and his wife, after attempting to laugh at the situation in a dignified and indifferent way, broke down entirely and resorted to flank attacks - at intervals she appeared suddenly at his side like an angry diamond, and hissed: "you promised!" into his ear

philadelphia wants you on the 'phone, sir

the world's series had been fixed in 1919, but if i had thought of it at all i would have thought of it as a thing that merely happened, the end of some inevitable chain.  it never occurred to me that one man could start to play with the faith of fifty million people - with the single-mindedness of a burglar blowing a safe

by the next year i had a few beaux myself

 her voice is full of money

i'll make you a mint julep.  then you won't seem so stupid to yourself

"he won't touch her," i said.  "he's not thinking about her"

 



4/20