� Stephen Sondheim, in �Move On,� from �Sunday in the Park with George�

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness! Season that finally motivates me to get a new knob for the heater in my car, because in the damp cool mornings some heat in there would be nice! Season to bust out the brown lipstick and the drapey wool crepe pants that due to some miracle of textile physics even I must admit make my thighs look fabulous!

OK, so it is not quite fall yet. But it is no longer summer, and that is a good thing. There�s something about summers in Seattle that is almost tyrannical. The weather here is temperate and warm and sunny for only maybe four months a year, almost five if we�re lucky, and to me this period of time is obnoxious, mocking, as if we ought to be paying we-are-not-worthy fealty to sunshine, acknowledging it always, and it also brings out the obnoxiousness in many residents of this city, whose righteousness about soaking up every possible minute of it in wholesome vigorous outdoor pursuits and disbelief that not everyone shares their love for rock-climbing (Extreme!) and Sunday-afternoon softball games translates into an arrogant intolerance that I have found peculiar to the Pacific Northwest. When the days grow longer and the skies more hostile, then I can relax, because everyone just lets me be; they have retreated into their shelters like a cuckoo back into the clock until next June when the cycle of gung-ho urgency will begin again. The tension that seems to come with the attitude of summertime-as-responsibility vanishes, and if in fact it�s resignation that most people are slogging through as the umbrella season dawns, to me it feels like freedom after oppression, the best kind of autonomy � a sense of promise that is not generic, or, no, not a sense of promise, an environment in which the promise isn�t yelling at you like a drill sergeant but rather murmuring into your ear, yours alone. For me autumn is always the season to focus, revise, restore, in a way that feels more like earned self-seduction than drudgery. It is not lost on me that this is an ideal time for the DL. (And don�t go reading anything huh-huh-huh into that �self-seduction� reference. That would insult us both, now, wouldn�t it.)

I�m in another good-ish mood today. And I guess I�m not doing too well with the write-every-weekday dictum, am I? Oh well, I�ll keep trying. Later next week I might not be able to write from work because they�re having the new temp in for the last two or three days of my tenure so that I can �cross-train� her, and, yeah, it kind of stinks how everyone assumes the �her,� but oh well on that count too. This is very funny because when I started here my entire orientation lasted fifteen minutes, and the only thing I�m going to accomplish by having someone here for 64 to 96 times that long is demonstrating to everyone in the office, by how little there is to explain, how little I do all day. And in a sense, what do I care, because I�ll be a lame duck by then � note to self: secure letter of reference before trainee arrives � but I know I�m going to be cranky not being allowed to surf or send personal e-mail or write, I am going to have eight hours a day to kill with my own bare hands. So it�s carpe diem in the meantime.

Good mood today attributable in mind-blowingly large part to Robert Earl Keen�s �Feelin� Good Again.� I think that if I could just hear this song every morning � as I did this morning � while sitting on my bed in my bathrobe with a big mug of hot strong coffee with cream not milk, writing out the checks that have to make today�s mail (hi, IRS!) and making lists of what I need to get done today, what I need to get on my Fred Meyer run tomorrow, etc. � and I know that what I�m describing sounds like the kind of checklistism that I�ve been kicking against, but what it *feels* like and thus what is operative is self-determination and rut-getting-out-of � then I could be maybe six percent happier overall, all the time. Seriously. I haven�t loved, loved and somehow needed, a song like this in ages, maybe since "Discoball World," and, for the thousandth time, god bless KEXP, amen. I can�t quite claim the mantle of the song�s title yet, note use of �yet,� but it makes me feel that I could, it ratifies the quiet small-scale kind of feeling good and makes it seem apprehensible, also something that is both a sufficiency and a state of grace. (Sheesh, talk about going back to my Jonson. Keen as modern-day Jonson? Hmm, that is not so nutty as it sounds. Maybe work on that idea sometime.) I told Adam last night on the phone, in response to his �So how are you doing?� that really I was still very up and down, a person could be forgiven for suggesting antidepressants even though that is not in a million years going to happen, and it�s true, I�m either aww-yeah admiring my own thighs or curled up in a fetal position weeping � Sorry about my self-hate! � but perhaps I could self-medicate in small part with a new album or two this weekend, and guess what would be number one on that list.

(If you go to the web site, you can play �Feelin� Good Again� for yourself, since broadcasts are archived for two weeks. It was on this morning between 7 and 7:30.)

Reasons why Rebecca is great: (1) this morning as I was warming up the car, she ran out of the house to bring me my lunch, which I had left on the kitchen table; (2) she is going to give me a ride to the garage tomorrow morning so I don�t have to walk to Capitol Hill afterwards, which is especially nice of her considering the early hour and the three-mile distance. Other reasons why I am in a good mood: (1) I called that Beacon Hill garage and the estimate for the timing belt replacement was $320, with a one-day turnaround; (2) I am thisclose to having the IRS off my back; (3) planned Saturday group outing to the Beacon for karaoke, at which Popeye is going to come out of retirement, Streisand-like, and sing one more time; (4) ditto tonight with Art to see the Souvenirs, where I am going to wear my �This Isn�t A Date� t-shirt, which if it�s the conversation-starter it usually is may actually lead to a situation conducive to him talking to live females; (5) drinks last night with Don, who proves that it is possible to have kids and still be all kinds of hip, up to and including quoting Hal Hartley dialogue (thanks to him also for the Sondheim lyrics); (6) brunch with Adam tomorrow at El Greco; (7) my sister has decided that she digs Wilco and that there�s a whole genre of music she pop-fixatedly knows almost nothing about and she has asked me � me! golly � to give her some edumacation, so I am making her a bunch of cds that I�ll mail tomorrow and that I think she�ll really love; I would bet money or cake that she�ll like �Strangers Almanac� best of all and that makes me happy too, that we know each other well enough that this kind of favorite-picking is instinctive, that as long as that sort of thing is what the word �family� means to you, you have no right to be maudlin about any of the rest of it, so there.

I was even going to see the Souvenirs alone, that was my original plan. I�ve had it in my head since the breakup was just a breakup that this was something I had to do, something necessary to my social evolution (and, at that point, to my acceptance of my status as the dumped chick), and I still kind of feel that way: I am not looking forward to it but it has to be done, me reading a book at the bar until the band I want to see comes on, having figured out what color lipstick best says don�t-fucking-fuck-with-me and makes me look mean or grotesque, maybe an eggplant purple, not talking to anyone all night, standing alone in such a way that at least appears unapologetic and diffident. Vanessa described a Crocodile show she and Popeye went to where there was a girl who was there by herself, dressed in vintage finery for a night out, and every so often a guy who was obviously popular and cool would pass her by and maybe nod in greeting, familiarly so that it was clear they knew each other, and she would lunge at what she thought was an opportunity for conversation, trying to latch onto him and have him pull her out of the state and implications of being alone. Vanessa deduced that maybe they�d had a horizontal date or two that had meant a lot more to her than to him, that was the vibe of their interactions. Hearing these things, I could picture the scene in perfect detail, and I was simultaneously enthralled by the emotional goriness of it, as if I were rubbernecking at a car crash � I wanted to know what awful clothes she was wearing and what wrong shade of lipstick she had on � and protective of her, wishing I could put myself between her and her neediness, I would interpolate myself into that night and go find the girl and talk to her, we would claim a table that some scenesters were vacating because they work with the guys in the opening band, and we would talk easily, I would advise her to forget about that chump and not even look at him, we�d have us some gin and a chat together because we were friends, we were sisters, we were comrades in ostracism and/or cluelessness, I realized: we were the same person. That was my first reaction to the vivid picture that Vanessa painted, and it hit me hard. And ever since then I�ve had it in my head that in order to prove to myself that I am not that girl � the starving car-crash aspects of her, the failure to recognize that to the cool dude she�s a joke and an object of derision or pity � I have to go be that girl on my own terms, with the book and the attitude and the unhunched stance, the steely-yet-still driver�s-license expression ineradicable, all night, from my face. It�s like the running books say, it�s a process of constantly breaking down muscle in order to build it back up stronger. Exercise and exorcise. And even though the despair and masochism of the breakup state of mind has given way to cautious hope on the emotional plateau of the DL, I still feel like this is something I need to do, a letting go and a grabbing hold of at the same time, as if this sphere of my life is a relay and I am passing myself the baton.

But not tonight. It is not the night for steeliness. Tonight I want to see Art, be around other people in the good mood I�m in because it is just that kind of good mood, and wear the shirt that makes people smile and will give them something to tell their friends about the next day, because it is just that kind of good mood too. Soon, though.

I may write some more later, I hope I do, but I should fake like I�m diligent for a few hours here.