We’re going on a drive, no return till Sunday, now there's a big drive. There might be a whole lotta country, a whole lotta cherries, and maybe even a drive through a donut drive-through, wahey!

In Marrickville: a slap-up lunch at a Vietnamese eatery, a bag of grapes, a red stripey dress flirting with the wind, and candy-colored sodas for all. I smell of the sun.

I like breakfasts in general, but breakfasts in Sydney are somethin special. Raspberry yoghurt, banana yoghurt, boysenberry yoghurt, blueberry yoghurt. We are not talking additives and flavorings, we are talking real, beauteous, smushy fruit bleeding into the creamy white. Holidays taste like full-cream dairy.

After the early morning rain, a sunny summer day means walks and treats. We packed up the baby and headed out. There was gelato in a cone while strolling under the green leaves of Bourke Street. The houses, higgledy-piggledy, sunned in the sun.

Christmas morning the smell of coffee crept upstairs and tapped me on the shoulder. The baby smiled, so I kissed her.

The day after Christmas was quiet and lazy, the comfortable hollow sound of roller blinds knocking against the windowframe in the breeze. Three naps later, I woke for snacks of buttery panettone and a pot of Stockholm Blend.

Later, Christmas leftovers at Matthew’s parents meant a happy reunion with everything tasty from the day before, plus a bonus pavlova—three tiers of meringue, thick, freshly whipped cream, and raspberries, and the whole sloppy regal gorgeous thing dripping top to bottom red and pink with rose syrup.

For someone who is terribly good at giving gifts—this is not horn-tootin’, this is fact and truth—how come I am so lame as to find myself scrambling for a Christmas present at eight p.m. Christmas eve? Tomorrow we go to Matthew’s parents’ place for a holiday feed, and here’s me about to show up empty-handed.

“If only I’d thought to pack something for Matthew’s parents before I came,” I said to CC.

“But we talked about it,” she said.

“But we didn’t!”

“But we did!” she said. “Remember? You asked if you should bring anything and I said, ‘Maybe just something for the family.’”

“For?” I said. “For? I thought you said ‘from’! I thought you said ‘Maybe just something from the family’! I thought you meant you were taking care of it, like, you were going to get something for them from us, the family!”

“Oh,” I said, “I am deaf.”

“Oh,” she said, “I mumble.”

“What a difference one word makes,” I said, when we were done beating the floor with silent laughter (the kid was asleep).

“‘Christmas’?” she said.

“‘From’!”

I took a little walk to the neighborhood bottle shop, hoping for lights on and doors open. And happy days are here again, people, because LiquorLand on the night before Christmas is chock-a-block with people about to make merry. A bottle of sparkling wine later, I am saved from social savagery.

As I exited the store, a guy with wild hair veered toward me and said, “Ho ho ho!”

For many years I wouldn’t eat a beet. No reason, really, and it probably had little to do with an old Nick at Nite sketch I saw on TV once as a youngster visiting America, a skit in which a princess’s parents torture her nightly for not eating her beets. Each time the beets, blood-red and threatening, hit the dinner table, all sound faded out to be replaced by the ominous, rhythmic thump-ump. thump-ump. thump-ump. of a beeting heart.

And then, sometime in the last year or so, I don’t know when the turn came exactly, my antibeet stance was reversed as inexplicably as it was originally assumed. Today, I hardly remember those beetless days of yore; the road since then’s been paved with sweet beets at Mogador, roasted beets at Westville, tangy beets from Rick’s Picks, beet dip at Erciyes—this last, deep pink permutation either mopped up with the doughy ends of a succulent suçuklu, or straight up on its own on the tip of a silver fork.

So: item! In 2005, I’ve decided, ginger will be the new beet. I like a gingersnap, and it is with open arms that I welcome a slice (a loaf) of gingerbread, but I’ve yet to fully embrace the rooty herb and all its potential. The conversion’s underway: yesterday I chugged a juice of pineapple, orange, and ginger, today I picked out a ginger brûlée with crushed pistachios at the Bourke Street Bakery. Both were wins, and I dare say the ginger added a lovely sharpness to the eggy brûlée. Meet me in a year, and we’ll see if I’m not standing in line in Chinatown buying a bottle of ginger soy milk and a handful of ginger candies.

In the midafternoon, a darkening sky and thunder rumbling about in the clouds. An electric streak across the sky like the Eighties. From the doorway, the coolness and the smell of wet. The rain comes, shyly. After, raindrops hang from the laundry line.

It was one of those things that boggled the mind, the fact that I was leaving my house Monday morning and wouldn’t get to where I needed to be till Wednesday morning. But the trip was surprisingly easy, the thirty-six-or-so hours of itinerant homelessness unoppressive. It was not without surprises: at immigration in Vancouver I learned that I need a visa to transit in Canada. Ah. For the bargain price of two hundred Canadian dollars (the alternative was deportation), the nice immigration girl granted me a temporary resident permit so I could make my connection and later transit there again on my way back. She was so nice she took my picture for the permit and then pressed another button on the camera, saying, “Well, let’s just erase that one and try again.”

A legal resident of Canada for two weeks, and with six hours to kill before the next flight, I stepped through the airport’s sliding doors into sunlight and freedom. There was a raucous, chortling phone call to CC, and striding up and down the pavement singing Stevie Wonder songs till I thought it might look suspicious before going back into the climate control.

From Vancouver to Sydney via Honolulu, the back section of the plane was a Christian family from Singapore, complete with Bible, plus the Australian ice hockey team fresh from playing in Spain. I asked Stephen Gallagher, Australian ice hockey player, if they’d won, and he explained how they were no longer in Division Three but had managed to stay in Division Two. “Congratulations,” I said. “Wait, that’s a good thing, right?” By the end of the flight, some of the younger players were getting a little punchy. When the stewardess started making the bilingual announcement in French, one of them called out a nasal “haw-haw-haw.”

I got to Sydney and CC was getting us doughnuts from Krispy Kreme. In the car, the baby was as advertised.



Yesterday afternoon saw some of us stretched out on the red sofa reading a cookbook while others of us lay on the blue sofa reading a comic book, that is the sort of winter summer vacation it is.

It is the sort of vacation where in the sun we go out for juices and sandwiches and salads of sweet potatoes and beetroot; the sort of vacation where you put a pink sock on the baby’s head, because it’s funny, and then you laugh, because it’s funny; the sort of vacation where you sleep with the windows open to the cool night breeze, and when you wake up in the morning Matthew puts on the coffee and a Van Morrison record.

(“I thought Van Morrison was a band,” I said, looking at the album cover, “and had I thought he was a man I would’ve thought the whole thing was his surname.” “Like Von Morrison?” Matthew said, taking off his glasses and rubbing his forehead. This is not the first time I have had this effect on a boy. And this is not the first time I have had this effect on Matthew. Matthew likes to put on music from back in the day, and when I say, “Who is this?” he repeats the question, all incredulous-like: “Who is this?” Sometimes he doesn’t even get to answering the question, he is so incredulous. Then I ask again, and he shakes his head. In any case, today, taking off his glasses and rubbing his forehead, he said, “Like Von Morrison? He’s not Dutch!”)

An excursion to Chinatown brings home bean cakes, bubble tea, chocolate rice, yoghurt candies, a can of lychees, a variety of buns, a box of meats, and some green sauce. That is the sort of winter summer vacation it is.

The thing with having to wake up ’round four to be at the airport for an early-morning flight is that my head won’t actually let me sleep till then. At half past two I blinked awake, ready to go. I’d been having a dream in which something crazy was going on with the air control in the apartment, so that it was blasting cold air into the room, making big black- and green-spotted lumps of cotton-woolly fungus sprout all over the place. In the dream, I managed to turn off the climate control, but I still had to clean up before the cab got here.

Still, awake at three a.m. is not so bad. If you are lucky like I am lucky, awake at three a.m. means a bowl of the Frankenberry cereal Gab gave me when he was in town. It is pink, with marshmallows. It is good to eat while smiling at the layer of snow frosting outside.

The sky was low and grey all day with the end of the year, so I went for a pick-me-up run. Aaah, we like to run, it feels goo-oo-ood, like spring, like flying, like my ponytail bouncing. By dinnertime, like a blessing, it was snowing.

Like some kind of Sixties Italian housewife, all morning I have been domestically gorgeous, swanning around to Gino Paoli. The laundry’s done, the house is clean, the girl is off again. Oh, crap, I haven’t packed yet.

Walking east on Saint Mark’s Place, a guy behind me said to his lady friend: “I just can’t believe they take a hot dog and wrap it in bacon and fucking deep fry it!” Then he burped, a deep watery burp like the sea. I crossed the street.



At Sympathy for the Kettle, there are lavender walls and a tea called Paris. They play The Pretenders, and the shopgirl brings you your tea with honey and frothy milk in a big round mug along with a plate of chocolate-covered macaroons, two of them for two of us.

Like the good old days, we sat down to dinner at Pink Pony, Tom and Jill and Schmio and me. Well, first, like the good old days, Schmio called, late, and said she was catching a cab and would be right over. There was a hot chocolate to start, and then a tasty Côtes du Rhône, and artichoke heart salads for all. Like the good old days, Tom and I got the booth side of things. We leaned back and he said, “Okay, what do we have to get to the bottom of?” and I said, “L-o-v-e.” “Oh, that,” he said. “Like books, that’s only if you don’t have anything else better to spend your time on.” “Tom,” I said, “that’s awful.” “I know,” he said, “I didn’t mean it at all; I was just being provocative.”

We bump up against each other and we lean our heads on each other’s shoulders and we walk arm-in-arm around the block for a smoke, like the good old days.

At the jukebox, two dollars gets you seven plays, so: Dylan; Dylan; Dylan; The Beatles; The Beach Boys; Tom Waits, because the song was called “Singapore”; and Bowie to round out the night: You like me, and I like it all, we like dancing and we look divine.

Like the good old days, midnight crept upon us like quiet like warmth like the covers pulled up snug under our chins.

Old biddies abound. Yesterday in Chinatown, two old Chinese biddies sat in a sunny spot on a stoop on Mulberry Street. In her hand, one held a miniature jar of Tiger Balm out to the other. Today on the F train, roundish, lumpish, two old biddies straight out of Maurice Sendak. One carried a polka-dotted oilcloth bag in blue and white. The other had a Christmas-tree pin on the lapel of her purple coat. This one pronounced the word “bad” like it had two syllables.

The sky was blue all day today like fortune smiling on our heads. We are lucky kids, me and Tom and Maud, being out of school and out of work.



Tom called this morning with an invitation to MoMA. “And I have a car,” he said. “So we don’t want to go to MoMA,” I said, “we want to go to California.” But to MoMA we headed, running a red light, speeding across the Manhattan Bridge, idling in traffic, muttering at other drivers, watching the pedestrians at the stoplights.



The new MoMA is cool, people. Really, really cool. Everybody run, don’t walk. Um, also, best to take the subway so you don’t have to pay forty-three dollars to park in a midtown garage. Yowtch. No, but, the space is incredible, what with the cut-out walls and open areas everywhere and the green helicopter hanging out. We furrowed our brows at the Pollocks, we scoffed at a goofy Dalí, we admired Ruscha’s Standard Oil Station series. In front of Leger’s “Three Women,” Tom said, “That’s sexy.” He said, “It’s like a naked tea party.”

Then we were hungry, so we drove down to Chinatown. Viola Wills’s “If You Could Read My Mind” came on the radio, which we like because of the rousing disco chorus. Maud shook her head at me and said, accusingly, “Pop junkie.” “You say it like it’s a bad thing,” I said, then leaned back and sang along: “I don’t know where we went wrong / but the feelin’s gone / and I just can’t get it back. . .”

Waiting for a table at Great N.Y. Noodletown, we looked into the kitchen in the back, where two whole pigs hung from the ceiling. They were being prepared for roasting, I think. A man was brushing them down with glistening. In my mind, I could taste the salty, crispy skin. Our waiter was a round, smiling man like a char siew bao. And the thing is, we are fond of char siew baos as is, but we like char siew baos a lot when they bring us seafood porridge, and sauteed dou miao, and stirfried eggplant with garlic, and beef in black pepper sauce.

We dropped Maud off at the Christmas tree in Washington Square Park after, and then Tom dropped me off in SoHo, where I made a quick stop in Dean and Deluca for a small loaf of cranberry bread and some fancy honey, ’cause a girl likes breakfast. Down Broadway, the evening sky was striped shades of pink like Paul Smith was in charge.

Home, showered, clean, smelling of flowers and white tea.

I’m kind of beat. This is the first quiet moment I’ve had since I got back from Paris Tuesday night. You’d think I’d be used to traveling by now, all these aller-retours in my life, but it is still a lovely surprise to me that I can wake up in one city and go to bed in quite another.

Oh, Paris. They know what they’re doing over there. And a girl sure can get up to a lot in a little more than four days, even with waking up around noon most mornings. In Paris, there was a Sunday walk along the Canal Saint Martin, with its curved wooden bridges round like pumpkins. Round one corner, the Antoine et Lili storefronts winked in pink and green and yellow. On rue du Faubourg du Temple, there was the gorgeous Sixties futuristic silver storefront of Robert et René, butchers, in which the day’s prices are announced in white plastic press-in letters on a black board: bifteacks bavette 11.40; aiguillette 11.40; divers 11.40; hache 7.13. There was a sit-down and a café crème in Les têtes brûlées, poring over some Belgian murder scandal in Paris Match. There was chancing upon the new Satrapi, which is funny and sad and good reading all around. There was staying up till three chatting with Gen, because we are girls, and we like to do so. There was picking out eight small, sweet-smelling clementines at a fruit stand and putting them in a crisp brown paper bag, feeling the comfortable heft in my hand. There was a jaunt through the parc des Buttes Chaumont, watching the ducks like white flecks on the pond. The graffitti on one pavilion read, in Chinese, “She is the luckiest one.” There was the Tunisian patisserie, where it was hard to choose. There was ice skating at the Hôtel de Ville, where Britney was blasting on the loudspeakers, and where there was a lot of falling. “J’aurai des gros bleus demain,” I said to Gab, but the bruises showed up within hours, and, man, it’s been a while since I’ve banged up my knees like this. These are some kind of souvenirs de Paris, all purple and magenta and blue, wholly frightening. There was a surprise visit from Clem, which necessitated delighted screaming down an echoing hallway, and big hugs. There was a Panda. Tuesday morning, there was a last petit suisse with some of Gab’s mum’s mirabelle jam in a blue-and-white porcelain bowl.

Nearing New York, there was the sunset from the plane, the sun orange blazing disappearing. Then there was the city, blurry spots of light through the mist and condensation. My head was pressed against the window, and I realized I was smiling, I was so happy to be home. At one point there was only a pure, smooth blackness, and I couldn’t tell what was sky and what was sea. It looked like we were descending toward water, toward nothing, really, but I didn’t feel too bad about it.

Roissy. Airport café. 11:52 a.m. Perched on a bar stool at a high round table. The leftover crusts of a prepackaged sandwich, the last cold sip of a mediocre café au lait in a paper cup. Gold tinsel garlands taped to the glass wall, the barest minimum of holiday cheer. Disembodied, unemotional, the soundtrack is a wave of flight announcements in alternating languages. I am not broken, but I am a little dented.

Early this afternoon I headed down rue du Faubourg du Temple with its Vietnamese take-out joints and and its African bric-a-brac stores and its signs for Turkish kebab sandwiches and fries. All around, a comfortable bustling neighborhoody cacophony. Through the Tenth and the Third, I skirted the Eleventh, flirted with the Fourth. In a boulangerie in the Marais, the radio was tuned to Nostalgie, week-end de Seventies Non-Stop.

I found a flea market on rue Perrée, the tables laden with delight and loveliness: a red rotary phone, a handheld mirror in a gold frame, a little green lamp on a metal stand, a old tin that used to contain black cherry pastilles, a porcelain salt dish with a squirrel attached. So this is where the buyers at Anthropologie come when they say that they just happened to come across such-and-such over a weekend in Paris—this, before they send the thing off for mass reproduction at a workshop in India. Around the corner, a man appraised the offerings at one stand: “Oh là là! Oh là là! Oh là là là là!”

Along the Seine, joy is poking through the bouquiniste stands. I thumbed through one guy’s brilliant collection of 1950s and ’60s children's literature—several Martines, a stack of Super Boy magazines, tales of horses and goats and a duck with a red ribbon round his neck, some Enid Blyton translations—before finally coming away with Le Dimanche de la vie, bound in coarse yellow linen with the title and author name stamped on the front in dignity and gold. It became clear I’d spent too long poring over books when I realized my feet were so cold I could barely feel them. Uh, is that frostbite? Unlike many an unlucky mountain climber, I found myself right then in front of la Samaritaine. It was warm in there, and I hear there's a Mariage Frères upstairs, but I didn’t make it past the women’s department on the first floor. I tried on a pink corduroy skirt from the sale rack at Agnès B, but the gathers that were adorable while the skirt was on the hanger were foolishness on me.

And then I was late to meet Gab, but I figured, Eh, French time. I booked it West along the Seine, speeding by two old dudes passing me in the opposite direction, who glanced at me wonderingly, probably thinking I had to have been a bit touched to be flurrying along instead of promenading on a Saturday afternoon.

We hopped one of Gab’s bateaux parisiens as the lights came on around the city. What is nice is: Every bridge illuminated in the evening mist. Fancy living rooms lit up in houses along the river. Fairy lights dancing in the trees. The Eiffel Tower having lost its head in the fog. Door number 13, tucked under a bridge like cuteness. Spaces for summer sambas. The shaa-shaa-shaa of the water outside. House boats, little and big, and especially the one with the car parked on deck.

Later, on rue des Bons Enfants, a black plastic bag fell out of the sky. Gab picked it up, reached in, and took out a star-shaped key, Paris is incredible that way. We let ourselves in the door on the corner. Upstairs, Manel gave me a peach-cassis tisane and a pink Ladurée macaron. “The O.C.” in French was on TV, and then some game show that necessitated the boys yelling at the box: “Oeil! C’est oeil, pédé!!” At one point Sophie couldn't find her Gauloises. I imagined her cat was sitting in the other room lighting up a fag, narrowing its eyes at us through the smoke. Perched on the sofa next to the radiator, cradling my mug of tea, I felt the fatigue creeping up on me. I had such a desire to close my eyes.

Back in Belleville, I craved English reading material. A magazine. A women’s magazine. With lots of pictures. Gimme a break, sometimes a girl just feels like her head’s been working overtime. It occured to me that maybe what I needed was a big bowl of pho. And some nems. And jasmine tea. I popped out to the Vietnamese joint at the end of the street with my new Queneau. Mmmm. Aahhh.

All day the sky has been greywhite like a goosedown comforter. I can't wait to be in bed tonight, snuggled down deep under real covers.

He was late coming to get me at the airport, but when he got there he traded me my weekend bag for a bag containing a croissant and a croissant and a giant raisin swirly thing. The thing is, we like a boy who cares about baked goods.

The RER ticket machines taunted us for a good many minutes while we debated if it’d just be easier to go to Marseille instead of Paris. In the city, heading toward the stairs leading out of the métro, I looked at him out of the corners of my eyes. “Go,” he said. I bounded up the steps, two at a time, into the day.

Home on rue de l’Atlas, there was yoghurt and homemade quince jam, and black coffee out of clay yoghurt cups. There was a very small fashion show highlighting corduroy pants with very fashion pockets. There was chilling out wrapped up in a Brazilian hammock.

Later, up several flights on a curving wooden staircase on rue du Buisson Saint Louis, we broke into Gab’s mum’s confiture cabinet. Squat jars, faceted jars, curved jars, fat jars, the jammy reds and thick oranges and deep yellows were labeled with blue ballpoint on small white labels. The shelves sagged, seemed to sigh contentedly. Or maybe that was me. . .

We picked Gen up from the Alliance Française and then headed to lunch at Hector’s crêpe place. We laughed at the Trapèze galette—ham, emmenthal, pineapple—and then I ordered it. Hector poured us ciders, then brought us Nutella crepes with hearts painted on them in Nutella brush strokes.

Hanging out in Paris with Gab means back streets like the sweet discovery of a secret book. There are twists, there are turns. Everything seems new and old at the same time. Unexpectedly, the gloriousness of Gérard Mulot loomed in front of us—and just too bad ’cause there we were, our little bellies full with crêpes. Later, we headed up the narrow, curving rue de la Montagne Sainte Geneviève. At Crocojazz, Gilles was pleased to see us. He opened the glass cabinets with a key tied on a cord around his neck. Gab got to go behind the counter to turn up the volume on the hi-fi. A thick glass ashtray balanced on a shelf of records. The small shop was blues and smoke.

Hector came to pick us up after, then there were coffees and a mauresque under toasty heat lamps. Gab said he was going to be late to work. He leaned back in his chair and took another drag on his cigarette.

Well, so, sometimes a girl gets it in her head to do a thing, and then she does it.

It feels like I’ve spent days now tweaking my résumé, but it hasn’t really been days of work—it’s been many parts of many days, minutes at a time until I quickly tire of the task at hand and tell myself I’ll come back to it. I was on the phone with Jon about it today and he said, “We need another way to say ‘manage.’” One Roget’s Thesaurus later, I was itching to use the following: Take the helm. Pull the strings. Call the shots. Hold the reins. Ride herd on.

Ah, we like words.

Meanwhile, I was IMing with Gab the other day and I said, “Je travaille sur mon résumé,” and he said, “C’est quoi ce résumé?” and I was like, “Euh, c’est un résumé,” and he was like, “Mais c’est quoi ton résumé?” on and bloody on, I believe at one point I said, “C’est un résumé, aaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!,” and then he said, “Mais tu résumes quoi?” and then, like the sun breaking through the clouds, like the angels descending to earth, like the chorus breaking into song, I realized “résumé” isn’t “résumé” in French. Ah, bon.

hasn’t stopped raining.
haven’t stopped smiling.

Jeff and I were doing that thing where you say, “Where do you want to go?,” “I don’t know, where do you want to go?,” and the thing is, no one likes that game, which is why when he finally suggested we meet at Patois, I said, “Oh, okay, and I haven’t been there in a while, so good.” I remember now why I hadn’t gone to Patois in a while—because it is just so not good. The light was nice in there, and the fireplace was warm and crackly and smelled of coziness, but other than that, well. The waitress was a more neurotic version of a Parker Posey character who came to our table and said, “And how are we today?” I didn’t know how to respond, because I didn’t know how she was today. And I guess a normal person would have said, “Good,” or maybe even not said anything at all, but somehow the thing that came out of my mouth was, “Uhhh.” Later, when Jeff, all politeness, asked if I liked the squash soup, I said, “It’s horrible.” And I didn’t just say it was horrible, I said it was haahh-rible. I mean, really, sometimes the things that come out of my mouth surprise even me.

(Oh, but that reminds me of the other day when I tried on some shoes at J. Crew. They were these gorgeous pink fabric pointy-toed things, and I really was trying them on just to see, even though I know my friend Yumei says there is no such thing as trying on “for fun.” But really, I was trying them on because, I dunno, I was there and they were there and I had some time on my hands. Feet. Whatever. Anyway, so I put them on and the salesgirl said, “How’re those?” and I said, “Actually they’re horrifically uncomfortable,” because they were. And she said, “Oh,” and then she tittered, unsurely, and then she said, “Oh,” and then she said, “I’m sorry.”)



We went to see “Closer” after. I didn’t know anything about the movie except that Jude Law is in it, which is often alls a girl needs to know. So I wasn’t aware of what I was in for, and, my god, that show was sharply uncomfortable to watch, the slow implosions of people and relationships.

And the thing is, I don’t get it. It just seems like it could be so easy, this whole love thing. Girl likes boy, boy likes girl, that’s really all you need, no? And yet, no. Maud reckons if it’s meant to be, it’s meant to be, and that’s when it’s easy. And Jeff figures the whole shebang’s too difficult altogether, and he’s giving up. I don’t know. But there’s got to be a way it all comes together in a way that works, this big l-o-v-e, because otherwise, well, otherwise what’s the point?

I caught the 12:37 bus home from Court Street, ’cause a midnight bus rides on velvet streets under a velvet sky.

Some nights after you turn out the light, you lie there in the dark with your eyes wide open, till you start to be able to make out the shapes from the shadows, and you trace the familiar charcoal sketches of your room. You lie there, thinking.

My public service announcement of the day is: Everyone immediately run, do not walk, and buy the new Zap Mama. (I know, I know, it’s not new new. Whatever.) Or, y’know, have Maud come over for a party with her travellin’ CD folder and then “forget” to “return” it until you’ve copied the album onto your computer. Either way.

On the train home:

The express and the local raced side by side for a good few seconds so I could watch, through TV-screen windows flashing by, life in the other capsule. For a moment, we were twin submarines.

There was a girl with a laugh like a motorboat starting up. Maybe a cartoon motorboat. A cartoon motorboat driven by a woodpecker with a captain’s hat and a rakish grin.

A young woman got on at Fourteenth Street and asked for change in a strange murmuring half-spoken, half-sung chant. Then she stood, unmoving, and cried. Object, abject. I didn’t know where to look, what to do.

Free and easy after class today, I hopped the 104 bus down Broadway to go find Ren a birthday present. (Eh, Ren, best stop reading now!) At Barneys Co-Op, there was Marc Jacobs in dress and shoe and jacket. There were candy-colored Adidas, and Puma Speed Cats in black and pink. There may well have been panic in my eyes. I said, “You don’t shop anymore. You. don’t. shop. anymore. Remember?” I got the girl her gift and hit the ejector button illico presto.

Oh, ha ha, that reminds me of the time Ryan and I were in San Francisco, and we were in a car, and I had an ice cream cone I was just about done with, and I had him drive up to a trash can so I could get rid of it. I rolled down the window half-way, stuck my arm out, and flung the cone in the direction of the bin, missing it completely. There was the car, the garbage can, and ice cream, melting, on the road in between. “Um,” I said. “Go! Go! Go!”

I was flipping through the glossy luxe Christmas issue of Madame Figaro at the magazine store on Broadway, and this guy started talking to me in French. And maybe what it is is, I just need to be taken by surprise or something—before my mind can kick in and tell me I’m conjugating stuff incorrectly and rap me on the knuckes and make me stumble bumble tumble about helplessly—because this afternoon I sure was able to hold my own. This French speaking, it’s a funny thing—some days it works smooth and easy like pouring cheesecake batter into a Springform pan, and other days it’s like, “Je— je— je— you speak English, right?”

Some days a girl just feels good, y’know? You’ve got your silver jingly earrings and a polka-dot skirt and a bookbag with a small hole in it, but you know just where the hole is so you’ve put your keys in your pocket. And the sun is out, and you walk to school along the park, and when you see one perfect tree with one perfect leaf still hangin’ on, you smile and say Hello.

I never thought this day would come to pass, but I just ended a sentence with “. . . not even for Jude Law.” Ah, unexpected.

Which reminds me of the time I was e-mailing with Maud and the conversation came to, “Well, the thing is, I really want to stay in and read Baudelaire.” Also unexpected.

Which reminds me of the time I was talking to Schmio and the conversation came to, “You know, Norway, the 1800s.” Well, you know.

Holy crap, I am so insanely hyper right now. HYPER RIGHT NOW. I was on the phone with Ren, and she said, “You sure are hyper right now.” And then I was on the phone with Maud, and she said, “You seem kind of hyper right now.” I AM. It’s that post-exam hyper, you know? Makes me remember how last fall after I turned in my last paper I was standing on Broadway and 112th on the phone with Tom, and he said, “Um. Have you slept?” What was strange, actually, was that I was feeling so weirdly calm about this exam all yesterday and all today, and was having trouble getting motivated to do very much work for it at all, which made me think, Either I know too much, or I know too little. And then this afternoon I went and took the exam, and it was fine, I guess, and then it was over, and there was no confetti, and there were no trumpets, it was just over. And it wasn’t till I got home tonight after hanging out with Maud and Karen and Rachel that I became all, “I need to do this and this and this and this, and I need to do it all right now.” Which is why after I put down my bag and took off my coat, I thought, Wait, maybe if I go samurai it up, it’ll make me chill out a little. And in the shower samurai-ing it up, I kept thinking, Okay, and then after this you have to do this and this, and then I made myself stop and only think about the present. Because isn’t that what a true samurai would do? Anyway then I got out of the shower and felt clean and lovely but wasn’t chill at all. The kind of not chill where I needed to find dinner, and I was standing in front of a fridge full of food and then a pantry full of food and then the fridge full of food again, and still couldn’t figure out what to eat. I don’t know how I’m going to get to sleep tonight. But maybe there will be no sleep tonight, which will be A-OK, because I have to do this and this and this and this, and I need to do it all right now.