� Greil Marcus, in "Days Between Stations: Kelly Hogan" (in "Da Capo Best Music Writing 2002, Jonathan Lethem, ed.; *get* this book)

By Saturday afternoon at 2 I'd already experienced the best entire weekend I'd had in ages. Seriously!

Friday after the temp job I came home and did some dumb things I gotta do, then dyed my new bedskirt orange, took it to the laundromat to dry it in the dryer, and put it on the bed. Damn, dyeing things takes a long time. I had forgotten that since college. So then it was time to dress for the TankedStock.com party, which I did in the less-sexy-more-Ingrid black sleeveless dress, black boots, and a pair of tights from my sister. My hair was not cooperating, down, up, anyhow, and I was getting cranky until I remembered... the feather hat! The hat that I was once told by my most fashion-forward friend that I should not wear because my features were too coarse for such a delicate confection and of which, since, I have always felt a little unworthy thus have let languish on a high closet shelf. But as to Lady Elaine, so to her and her unlamented memory: I put on the feather hat and it looked fantastic and I ate some food and hit the road. The first thing I would later feel crummy about, a little bit crummy, was when I found the house and from the outside it did not appear to be rocking and I called Joe on his cell phone and said something about a distinct possibility of lameness. I lurked at a corner until Joe and Alyssa pulled up and we all went in together and not only was the party un-lame, I got something else to feel crummy and chastened about when it turned out that none of my carefully prepared lies were necessary in the slightest. Reason for lies being unnecessary was that nobody cared in the least what I was or wasn't doing for money, they were just plain old glad to see me. Why am I such an asshole sometimes? Can anyone tell me that? So I had a non-rocking but marvelous time at the party, drank me some beer and ate me some cupcakes and saw lots of Tank people some of whom I had not seen in over two years, and incidentally I was not the only person there whose employment status is nothing to brag about. Got some phone numbers of potential show-going-to pals and made tentative plans for a dinner party a few weeks don the line. I was talking about running with Cheryl, who's been doing half-marathons, and Lloyd, who wants to start running regularly, and he asked me if I had any interest in running around Green Lake with him Saturday morning. Oh no, I said, I always run by myself, I haven't run with another human being since high school. But then all of a sudden I got that old rush of yes-girlness, and the logical inference to be made from not having run with anyone in over ten years seemed to be Well, it is about time you did. So I changed my RSVP and went home to sleep and then the next morning went running with Lloyd, and although I'd fretted that I would be too poky for him and would end up embarrassing myself, it was great and fine and I felt terrific to have done the day's exercise before 11 a.m. and we are going to try to make it a regular thing. Then I ran some errands and went to Vivace to have coffee and read the Da Capo book � that's when I got to the Marcus piece, and it was so so perfect � and I was wallking around Capitol Hill, Capitol Hill!, among the Outfit-wearing scenesters in my leggings and ratty old sweatshirt and messy sweaty pinned-up hair and zero makeup and I didn't even care, in fact I was making myself giggle feeling like the dotty aunt in the attic. On my way back to my car I ran into Rohm, and we chatted a bit and he is also starting to feel good again after a big bad late-summer depression, and he gave me his card and I said goodbye and then right after I turned the corner I ran into Erik and Erika, two cards in the space of half a block, and I talked to them too and they alerted me to the Twice Sold Tales sale on Thursday, $200 worth of books for $100, and then I went home. And an hour or so later I even found the missing lipstick, in my laundry bag, but considering the other elements of the laundry-doing experience, including (a) another gross and disgusting pickup attempt and (b) a guy coming in with an area rug that I swear had bloodstains all over it, the clock had stopped on the weekend's worth of great by then, not that the rest of the weekend was lousy � just that by early Saturday afternoon, I was already sated by greatness, and I do not like to be greedy about these things.

An orange bedskirt that goes perfectly with my bedspread! A nice party and, ahem, a lesson about people liking me just on account of my bad self. (Later in the weekend, an interesting hypothesis was presented: My biggest problem, if ha ha you had to name just one, is that I'm too hard on myself, that my self-image is so at odds with what others think of me that when they find this out they think I'm seriously fucked up.) Friendly hospitality, benign gossip, renewed contact with old pals, people to cook for, compliments on my tights and my legs and the rehabilitated feather hat, a new way to go running that also forces me to push myself, companionship, completed errands, excellent coffee, no fear, and Greil Marcus hitting the nail right on the fucking head. Even the day was perfect, gray but not rainy or overcast � the weather made no demands; it pressed no agenda; it was mine alone. Also at the party there was a kitten that the householders had recently adopted, four months old but tiny and scrawny, the blind runt of a litter born to a mother that had feline HIV (but don't worry, the kitten is fine), and it stayed on my lap, dozing, for over an hour, its little ribcage in my cupped left hand as I petted it with the right one. People kept coming over and saying the cat never sat still that long, it was usually a total spaz, they couldn't believe it. And I wanted to believe that the cat might be on to something.

Talked about the DL some with Rebecca on Sunday, after I talked about it in a more cursory manner on Sat nite with Julian and Art and learned that they � my friends � think it makes me a sucker. They allow for the possibility that it's doing what I say it is, that it is the clearing away of debris from the hothouse explosion, but they also note that it looks an awful lot like Todd's back-burnered me so he can look (typo: "cook") for a new and less complicated lady, that if he finds her he'll dump me and that if he doesn't I'll be his Miss Might-as-well; that any way the DL resolves itself it will have made me a chump and dishonored me. Personally I believe, because I have to believe � I mean this in the same sense that DP once told me that he had to believe he was the best writer of anyone he knew and anyone he read or else he would stop writing � that Todd's been up front with me about the DL and the whole situation, blah blah blah. But these are my friends thinking like this, also people who like Todd very well, and they're taking the uncharacteristic care to formulate their concerns in this sensitive way so as to hurt me as little as possible. So maybe I should see if there might not be a little room for science in my religion here, do you think? Without making me one of the fallen. I told Julian that frankly Todd was crazy if he thought he could do better than me, that if he tried then it would only make it easier for me to get over him. Though the swagger part was more performance art, I realized that the words were truer than false, and Julian congratulated me on more self-esteem than he thought I had in me. And here's the question, which I was also talking about with Rebecca: to what extent is the success so far � shut up, the call is mine to make � of the shit-getting-together project attributable to the DL, and to what extent is it coincidental, or maybe just a function of less of the psychic white noise that other people can be if you're looking to be distracted from yourself in the first place? Perhaps that will be revealed in the fullness of time.

I heard a story over the weekend concerning some man troubles that have befallen the friend of a friend. This person barely knows me and does not like me, and it's weird to me how awful I can't stop feeling on her behalf even though if she knew I was feeling anything like behalfness for her she might want to change her name and move to another state, how I want to punch or put a spell on the bastard in question, how much I can't stop thinking about how despicable was his dirty-dogging and wish, in the spirit of the Nation Of Amanda dream, I could offer her a drink, some cookies, sympathy, reassurance, anything. Maybe one day I can do the same � be the person who does it � for someone else. So I've taken this person's situation oddly to heart, I feel curdled and watered down by it, and also I've been feeling especially mortal because I talked to my mom on Saturday afternoon and she told me about the memorial service she'd just been to for a guy I used to know many years ago, a deeply decent person I worked with for a while and who once helped me with a radio project that would be my best work ever. Talking out loud about him not being around anymore, which led to the good old larger-sense dwelling along the lines of everyone I know will one day die, I almost got teary right there in the Crocodile, and then I almost got self-destructive and jumped into a bottle of bourbon because my stupid project of self-overhaul, let alone the earnest neverending documentation of it, seemed so asinine. For a moment I felt a ripple of something like self-defilement, as if what I'm doing these days amounts to sitting in cold dirty bathwater.

But no. Break down the muscle so it comes back better than it was. One foot in front of the other and stay the course. More from Marcus:

The torch singer wears her heart on her sleeve. Today on Hogan it looks good, like a dress she's had for years, that simply didn't look right until now, when something in the air brought it into style. Up against the facts of life it's the smallest thing in the world, but you pick up the pieces one by one.

I'm not going to get panicky next week and start kicking my own ass. It will be weird to wake up tomorrow morning, Monday, and not have to go or be anywhere, and I predict I'll be shaky at first, but it's OK. Reading, errands, dressers, cooking, running, coffee with Rohm, maybe lunch with Vanessa one day, those temp-agency appointments. And listening to Kelly Hogan.