December 3, 2003.
It's Me


Please let me apologize for my long absence. I'm so happy to be back writing in this space.

We're moved. We're settling in. We're happy. All is well.

The spare bedroom is still half-full of cardboard boxes. But we're slowly unpacking them, reclaiming the room.

I have so many images and thoughts that I wish I could share with you right now. It's been almost two months since I wrote! And so much has happened! In that time as I've waited patiently to get our pesky computer problems straightened out, I've written so many journal entries in my head. But now that I'm actually here in front of a blank screen, all those entries are mysteriously absent from my brain... and all I can think about is the tragic lighting situation in this chilly little office space, and the sound of cold rain falling on the leaves outside.

So maybe I'll break back into the journaling by making a few goofy lists.

Here is a brief list of things that have happened since I last updated:

• Finished painting the interior of the house (this is quite an accomplishment; there's only a bit of bothersome touchup left to do). Hung gorgeous silk curtains in the living room ($35 from Target, naturally). Purchased ridiculously expensive lamp base from Anthropologie; topped it with beaded lampshade from Pottery Barn. Felt briefly like a grown-up.
• Noticed those grown-up feelings melt away as I realized that we still have a flannel sheet serving as our curtain in our bedrom. Go ahead and laugh, people. It's definitely chuckle-worthy. But I must say, curtains are expensive. And I refuse to go into credit card debt for the sake of drapery.
• Missed and mourned Elliot Smith, who was truly wonderful.
• Had coffee with my old friend/mentor L1nford. Realized the day after the event how much I talked his ear off, then felt like a total moron.
• OK, this is me doing some serious name-dropping, but 1ra Glass put one of my songs on the show. Yes. That 1ra Glass. We've been occasionally swapping e-mails since he appeared at the Rialto Theatre here in Atlanta last May. I've been sending him CDs with fun musical selections for potential use on a show. A couple of weeks ago he finally used one. (Go here to listen to the episode on RealAudio. The song runs underneath the intro segment, about the girl on the bus. If I'm not mistaken, this makes me "pseudo-famous.")
• Counted the days until the last Rings installment.
• Enjoyed Noël's birthday dinner with a wonderful meal at the real live Roman Lily Café in Atlanta — always one of my favorites. If I ever get put on death row, I may just request their turkey meatloaf with horseradish sauce as my last meal. Finally walked up to the owner of Roman Lily after the meal, and confessed, "So, uh, I have this web page called Roman Lily... I stole your restaurant name...." (She was very charming and gracious, and said, "Oh, so you're the girl with that web page!")
• Planted 75 tulips in the front yard, and a big bucket of pansies out by the front steps. Sighed at the overcast sky; felt ready for spring.

Books read since I last updated:

• True Notebooks by Mark Salzman. I first got acquainted with Salzman last year when I read his wonderful novel Lying Awake. True Notebooks is a nonfiction account of his experiences as a volunteer teaching creative writing at Central Juvenile Hall in Los Angeles. The stories in this book were both hilarious and heartbreaking. Salzman has a real gift for understated storytelling; the anecdotes he chooses to share really let his characters sparkle. Also, I adore his sense of humor. A relatively quick but moving read — highly recommended.
• Lolita by the inimitable Nabokov. It was my second time reading this one. People, this is a breathtaking, hilarious, sad, tragic, moving, thought-provoking book. Read it if you haven't already. Be awed. Nabokov wrote the book in English, which wasn't even his primary language. Read just a few pages and get a sense of his dazzling use of the language — you'll see what an incredible work of art this is.
• Teaching Lolita in Tehran by Azir Nafisi. This was a book club selection. Frankly, I felt it tended a bit toward melodrama but it's still quite lovely. It's the memoir of a woman who resigned from the University of Tehran in 1995 after refusing to wear the veil. After resigning, she gathered a group of her favorite students into a literature class that met in her home. Together they secretly read and discussed "forbidden" works of literature (such as Lolita and The Great Gatsby). Quite moving and totally sobering. (It includes not a few stories of 13-year-old girls thrown in jail because they were caught with a few strands of hair showing underneath their headscarf.)
  

OK, it's late now, and I know this is a silly, short entry, but I must adjourn. But I'm back, and I'm happy about it. There's no getting rid of me now.