What the doctor should have meant: dishery.diaryland.com

The times, and a record of the times. The thing, and the product of a thing.

I got to the garage on Friday afternoon and the shop guys and their buddies were standing around as if trading war stories, and their circle parted for me, they seemed glad I was there, and as they started talking to me I deduced that the sealant operation had been a bigger success than they�d hoped and I was cleared for Portland. "Portland, no problem. No problem!" beamed the mechanic whose name I don�t know. As it happened, I needed a new radiator too, but since they know what a money pit my car has been this year they didn�t charge me labor for removal of the old one nor installation of the new one, and they got me a screaming deal on the tires. I love C.L. Auto. And Saturday driving was just what I�d wanted. Sun and sunroof, camisole, beef jerky, temperature gauge holding steady, new cd from my sister � what is it that makes the Strokes-Christina Aguilera smashup so genius? Because, oh man, it is; I will have to think about that and get back to you � lunch and errands with Lib and then back, after some in-transit negotiations, to meet people for dinner. (Question: Is it hypocritical to rail against cell phones, you will never have one, people who do are inconsiderate cretins acting out their inferiority complexes that they�re not important enough, they are destroying both privacy and public life, etc., yet consistently to resist making plans in advance because you rely on the fact that other people have them and that�s how you can get in touch anytime?) I walked into the restaurant and said hello and in response to a how-was-your-day pulled aside the placket of my overshirt and showed evidence of the only part of it that had been significantly less than perfect: I did get some sun on the drive down, but not on the place diagonally across my chest where the seat belt had been, d�oh. Steve (consolingly): "It�s not so bad. It�s kind of punk rock." Stephen (not consolingly): "Yeah, like the White Stripes." Ha! For the record, I was not being sarcastic in the least when I referred in the last entry to my rich full wonderful life; in fact, maybe Steve should not get a motorcycle after all and maybe my sister should not get back together with Matt P., because with much more stimulation like this, I feel like my heart could burst right open, splat.

In an article in the Saturday Oregonian, there was a Chuck Taylor article about Jewel that had originally appeared in Billboard, titled "Jewel Takes On a New Stylistic Gleam With Her 'Happy Record.'" (Didn�t Taylor used to write for the Voice 15 or 20 years ago? Didn�t he used to be not a hack?) In the accompanying photograph, the look Jewel is going for is Pat Benatar meets Traci Lords, and here are my three favorite quotes of hers from the article:

"I�ve always been considered a serious artist."
"It�s true, I�ve always held back; I always believed you can�t be smart and sexy at the same time. But at this point, people know who I am and what I stand for, so I feel like I can play with that image and offer some irony."
"If you look at it just for the beat value, this is a fun record. But if you want to go deeper, there are as many levels of irony as you want. If you want to hear what I�ve learned about the world and what I�ve been through in my life, it�s there."

Steve�s phone died and I never answer my land line, so I took mine over there. It is a spiffy one with a built-in answering machine so it was necessary to change the message that had reflected the old digits, and he wanted me to record it, he said, because my voice was nicer. I asked if I should say anything special, and he said No, just say this is [my name] and Steve�s and we�re not here so call back. I am not proud of this, but I should tell it for the record: I almost had a panic attack. Oh no no no, I said, I don�t think I should be on the phone, I�m not going to be using this number anyway because I have my cell phone, don�t make me say my name on your machine. "You�re never going to give that number to anybody as yours, you�re not going to tell anyone you live here?" he asked. Well, I said lamely, my sister and Vanessa already have it and I guess once I�m here then the people who call me can have it in addition to the cell phone� and, really, as I stammered I realized that there is no reason for me not to be on the machine and on record and even though I don�t live there yet his place feels at least as much like home to me as that residential storage facility on Beacon Hill in front of which I park my car sometimes, so the word for what I am being is "unreasonable." I think of myself as decisive to a fault, decisive to the point of having blinders on, but this stuff is taking longer to get my head around. I�m sorry and I know I can do better.

I�d resisted involvement in vacation planning the last few months, I think, because subconsciously I must have felt that Gastro was a sticking point and reflexively I did not want to get stuck; Steve would pull out the Let�s Go! guide or send me the URL of some Greek tourism-boosting agency and I looked at the maps but I felt distant from them and, deep down, panicky. I think I wrote here once that I was superstitious and wouldn�t believe I was going until I was on the plane and the plane was on the runway, that who knew whether Steve and I would even like each other all the way in August. But I think I was wrong and that I wasn�t, ha, parsing my resistance closely enough. Because now that I have my plan to quit, I am all in, I am excited as all hell. The latest idea is that since I won�t have a vacation-time counter ticking, I am free to come for three weeks instead of two, so rather than being in Germany for one day I can come for the whole week. And then, this hardly seems possible but Steve�s father reports that there are 20-euro advance-purchase fares from Cologne, leaving daily, to Athens and Istanbul and Izmir, so the second leg of the trip can be initiated much more cheaply than we�d thought. I will plan on re-entering the temping circuit sometime in September and I will also keep applying for jobs while I keep my focus on Izmir, which is just east of Chios, north of Ephesus and south of Troy.

I am liking this chick and her Mr. National Security. I am picturing our correspondent as the lustily rapacious colleague of Vi�s from "Big If," the one who tried to take her to Inside The Beltway � what was her name? I wish I could remember. Also, Costello published his first novel under a pseudonym. Also, the Diaryland Dean campaign starts here � don�t his sentences, chock-full of dependent clauses and well-chosen words, totally make you drool?

Last night while I was at Steve�s, Sarah came by and asked Do either of you guys have anything you need dyed red because she was about to have at a pair of pants and there was extra space in the pot. (Further support for my theory that Sarah is cool is that she was roasting a chicken at the same time.) OK, I freaked out about the phone, but I was touched by her "you guys," and I�d memorized its moment, Sarah in the doorway wearing a black t-shirt with a skull and crossbones on it, before the rising inflection of the question mark, and I am not being sarcastic either when I say that I felt like I should start singing "I Think I'm Going To Like It Here." Yesterday I took over two bedside tables and a shelving unit that now stands in Steve�s kitchen, in the kitchen that�s going-on-mine too, and so far it has on it a microwave, some Tupperware, and a bamboo plant. Arbitrary target date to have me all out of Casa Rebecca and living in the bacon shack for keeps is August 12. Oh, and does anyone need a microwave?

I read a lot of magazines this weekend, back issues of Harper�s and the Atlantic. I went boating and swimming and to brunch. I did dishes and did not do laundry. There is more to tell, there is always more to tell, but I�m getting antsy � all the doctors are gone this week and this is filling me more with unease than relief � and I�ve challenged myself to do desk work all afternoon, starting now.