July 1st - October 31st

October 26th, 2003 - I have been fasting. I ate dinner Sunday night and then didn't eat solid food again until this morning. I drank juice and herbal tea. The reasons I did this are various, but I'll get to that at the end. First I want to tell you what I learned during my fast.

First, I learned that I don't really need to eat in the strictest sense of the word. Sure, I felt intermittently hungry, but not so hungry that I really suffered at any point. Mostly I felt like my normal self, maybe just a little light-headed once or twice, a little bit emotional for about half-an-hour the first night and a little less inclined to take on heavy mental labor overall. But honestly, picking out the symptoms of my food deprivation was just like the first time I smoked pot. I could never really tell whether I was feeling something or just wanting to feel it. Suffice it to say I became hyper-sensitive to my physical state and read too much into every little thing that happened with my body. Not once did I feel that I absolutely needed to eat in order to go on functioning in what is, for me at least, a fairly normal way. I had energy to do things like walk the dog and climb stairs. I went to work and had no trouble concentrating.

I also learned the difference between physical hunger and psychological hunger. Often, over the course of the three days it occurred to me that I should eat something. This sensation, I discovered, owed more to the time of day and degree of my boredom than to actual hunger pains. I did have some mild hunger pains, throughout the fast, but they were nothing when compared to this baseless, psychological hunger. It helped me realize how much I eat just to pass time, not that I have a huge problem with in-between meal snacking. I don't have weight issues of any sort, but I realized that most of the munching I do during the day isn't connected to any physical need for food, but rather to a psychological need to be doing something with my hands and mouth. When I smoked I guess it was less of an issue. In fact, it's probably not an issue now. As I said, I don't have a weight problem. I just wonder how healthy it is to always be eating when your body isn't really calling for food.

Another thing I learned is how integral a part of human interaction mealtimes really are. At the office, my co-workers would mass for lunch and I would remain at my desk, sipping some juice and tapping away at the keyboard. At home, Brittney would throw some quick and easy meal together and eat it in front of the TV, while I heated some vegetable broth and retreated to the office. I actually began to feel somewhat isolated and lonely as a result of not taking part in lunch or dinner with other people. In fact, overall I felt sort of lonely, like I was the only person in the world going through this strange experience. Never mind the fact that Ramadan started on Monday and a billion Muslims began fasting at the same time I did. Hey, they feast when the sun goes down. It's different.

Speaking of religion, here's what didn't happen to me, while I was fasting: I didn't become any more serene, calm or introspective than I normally am. Simple denial of solid food stuffs did not stimulate any sort of spiritual growth. Nor did people beg me to eat, like that guy begged Ghandi to eat in the movie, throwing a crust of bread at him, weeping and beating his chest. Whenever I think of fasting I think of that scene, oh, and the one where he decides to end his fast and they prop him up on the bed to drink some water with lemon in it.

I'm not like Ghandi. I'm not like Ghandia at all.

For example, I was relieved that none of the drugs I did in college leeched out into my bloodstream to produce flashbacks or crippling schizophrenia during my fast. Believe it or not, I was subtly afraid that might happen. Fasting is, after all, supposed to draw the toxins from your body. That was part of the initial rationale for doing it, to purify myself. But I'm not sure it worked. My tongue turned yellow and my breath was bad. Otherwise I didn't stink any more than I normally do, this despite following instructions to 'brush my skin' before bathing.

In fact, all of my bodily functions went on just as they had before. The only interesting thing was seeing the very specific things I was putting into my system as they exited the works, specifically the beetroot juice I drank on Tuesday and Wednesday. Alone in the men's washroom on Wednesday morning I thought I might be dying. Then I remembered the color the beetroot juice had turned the glass I drank it from and I laughed. Hard. I'll spare you the other, side-splitting details.

I broke my fast this morning with a small bowl of maple nut oatmeal. I followed that with a tub of steamed spinach and some carrots around 10:30am. As the day wore on and I added a lunchtime salad, I could feel my digestive system starting up like an old lawn mower, sputtering and smoking. After the salad I actually felt quite full. Tonight I went out for Vietnamese, just some tofu rolls and some vermicelli. I don't think I'm ready for barbecue yet.

Now to get to the question on everyone's mind: Why fast?

At first I talked about doing it to purify myself, to get healthier. I even did some very cursory research into the medical benefits of juice fasting. I have some friends who have done it, and they all rave about the energy boost they get on the third day as hunger pain recedes and mental clarity takes its place. Their recommendations intrigued me, and I even found some seemingly reputable medical sources who extolled fasting as one facet of a healthy lifestyle.

In the end those were all just pretenses though. I did it because I wanted to do it. I wanted the experience. I wanted to maybe suffer a little and to learn something about myself thereby. And I guess I achieved some of that, but not nearly what I had hoped to.

I didn't suffer a great deal. I felt just as hungry on day three as I did on day one, which is to say I felt kind of hungry, but not desperately hungry the way you sometimes feel when you're working hard and miss lunch. I don't know how I avoided deep down, soul-rending hunger. I just did. Maybe juice and tea is enough to stave off that sort of pain.

Or maybe not eating is just a good way to stave off the hunger for new experiences we sometimes have. I certainly achieved that, and now I can eat again.

October 26th, 2003 - The clocks turned back and replayed the 11 o'clock hour last night. All across America, except in Arizona, Hawaii and most of Indiana, people went right on ahead doing what they were doing, oblivious to this one fleeting chance to relive those sixty magical minutes. I mean how many times have you said, "If I only knew an hour ago what I know now...?"

Brittney and I lay on the couch, the television simultaneously entertaining and sedating, drifting off to sleep and coming to again as the laugh track made clear we were missing something worth watching though not in time to actually watch it. The people in one of the apartments across the street pumped bad club music out their open windows, and the commuter rail trundled by on its tracks.

How could we all have wasted this golden opportunity?

Why didn't we use that time to travel and see the world, catch up on correspondence, learn a foreign language or help a neighbor? Why didn't we throw an hour long party that started at midnight and ran until midnight? Honestly, I wish the kids across the street had taken this last option. Then we wouldn't have had to sleep in the guest room to escape their noise.

Most of the people I know bemoan daylight savings time. For those of us who live in northern climes, daylight savings kicks off the cold, dark winter, when we rise in the dark, leave for work, give those precious daylight hours to some undeserving employer and then return home in the dark.

The truth is, this is actually the end of daylight savings. The savings comes in the summertime, when we shift the clocks forward to move the daylight from our early and sleep-filled mornings into the evenings, when fat men play softball in public parks and kids run the streets till 9pm.

That's why undoing daylight savings isn't a great option. It would mean giving up daylight in the summer and still not having it in the winter. That is, unless, we could all agree to shift the clock forward an hour permanently. Then we'd all have what we want, but the sun would be high at 1 instead of noon, and that wouldn't make any sense, like the brail instructions at the drive-up ATM.

The simple and easy solution is to shift the working day back an hour so that we're all leaving work at 4pm by the time the winter solstice swings around. We'd only have half-an-hour or so of light left, but it would be better than the cave-like effect we get now. We wouldn't need to bother 'springing forward' anymore, because we'd have four hours from end of work to sun down at the summer solstice (at least here in Boston. Results may vary at other latitudes).

Isn't it just like humans to shift the clocks to get more daylight, rather than just shifting their behavior a little bit? Really, Brittney and should have dozed on the couch from 10-11pm, headed to the guest room for some shut eye and then rolled out at 7am for the greasy breakfast we had at the diner down the street this morning. That way, we'd have saved some daylight and not had to wait so long for our egg and cheese sandwiches.

October 23rd, 2003 - The phone rang, a call I was expecting but not at that exact moment, a conference call, all my shirked obligations on the line demanding explanations and restitutions. In my mind's eye I could see them there, arrayed around one of those boomerang looking phones with satellite speakers for those at the far reaches of the table, the table itself long and heavy, made of particle board with a veneer top, surrounded by a gaggle of plasticky office chairs.

At the table sat a friend's birthday party, a tip envelope representing the guy who delivers the Sunday paper, a small stack of utility bills, a couple of unsent wedding gifts, a thank you card or two, a Friday night out when a friend's band was playing and a calendar demanding a date with my wife.

Immediately I started hemming and hawing about how busy I was, shuffling the papers around on my desk and hoping they'd offer to call back.

They didn't.

So I put them on hold for a minute while I searched frantically for the spreadsheet that says where I'm going to be and what I'm going to be doing for the next few weeks.

Aha! Found it! Shifting gears, I put on my confident, project manager's voice and started talking about prioritization, resource shortages and opportunity cost. I suggested we take each obligation in turn and allocate some time in late November, possibly early December, for it. This idea went down like the Hindeberg in the still New Jersey wind. All at once they began talking.

The friend's birthday party was persnickety. It was, after all, her 30th, and I had missed it and that wasn't very cool, especially since the friend was right on the line between friend and coworker and missing the party had suggested pretty heavily that I felt our relationship was more of the co-worker variety than the friend variety. Now obviously I couldn't attend a party that had already taken place, so I offered to send belated regrets via e-mail as soon as the conference call was over. This solution seemed acceptable to the party, though there was a brief play made for the posting of a conciliatory gift. I rejected that on the grounds that I am both short of cash and not entirely convinced I would have brought a gift to the party had I attended it as requested.

"Fine," said the party. "Send the e-mail, and we'll see how it goes from there."

"I will," I replied. Then I said, "And I think the e-mail will have to suffice, because really, I don't need needy friends. I'd prefer to keep someone like that as a co-worker."

Well that shut the party up and a good thing to because I was thinking about not sending the e-mail.

By this time, the tip envelope that comes with the Sunday paper was growing restless. He had other conference calls to be on, other profligate subscribers to shake down. He pelted me with abuse for half a minute and then followed up with a concise guilt trip about the paper carrier's inability to send his kids to college. I reminded him that if I didn't feel liquid enough to purchase 30th birthday gifts for friends who might actually just be coworkers, then I certainly didn't have a lot of money lying around for the higher education of a virtual stranger's progeny. This he accepted more because he was short of time than because he believed me. I promised to post a sizable gratuity at Christmastime and left it at that.

"You're a cheapskate and a louse," he said, backing his chair away from the table and making to leave.

"Be that as it may," I began, but stopped there as I heard the door slam behind him and an uncomfortable silence settle amongst the remaining obligations.

The unsent wedding gifts piped up next. They were angry, and rightly so, because not only were they unsent and overdue but also unpurchased and unwrapped. I offered feebly that Emily Post allows a full year after the wedding to deliver a gift.

"We gave you a year," they said in unison.

Now I felt badly. These were friends whose happiness and well-being I genuinely cared for. I told them that Brittney had some ideas and that I'd pursue those with her and get the gifts out as soon as I could.

"At this point we have little faith in your good intentions," said one of the gifts, speaking for both. "You've already damaged your friendships by not purchasing and posting us promptly. The proof is in the pudding. Stop procrastinating and start meeting your social commitments."

I was beaten. Shamed.

"I'll make this up to you," I said. "I'll get really great gifts, thoroughly creative and unexpected and yet highly prized and special. You'll see."

They were quiet. They'd said their piece. We moved on.

Next up, the utility bills recited a list of dates and figures, presumably what I owe on gas and electric and telephone. Truthfully, these bills are just pushy. They get paid late only because I'm lazy, not because I'm short of funds. I told the gas and electric not to worry, that I'd put a check in the mail for each of them. The phone bills on the other hand needed a talking to.

"I could cancel any one of you (I have three phones) and be perfectly happy," I began. "You spend so damn much money on advertising to try to win my business and then when I finally choose you, you do everything in your power to drive me away by having crappy customer service and hounding me for three-day-late bills. I hope you each rot in hell. You'll get your checks next week."

With a head of steam behind me I moved on to the issue of the thank you notes.

"I don't send thank you notes," I stated baldly. "If you needed a thank you note you shouldn't have sent whatever I was supposed to have thanked you for in the first place. I never asked for it, whatever it was. In all likelihood I wasn't even thankful, so just be grateful I'm still doing you the service of not lying to you. Oh, and you're welcome."

The thank you notes could be heard on the other end of the line carefully inserting themselves in their tiny envelopes and sliding out of the room.

That's when Friday night out with a friend's band playing cleared its throat. "And me? What about me?," it said. "I guess I'm not as important as a birthday party, but you could have at least called."

"Look," I said. "I wanted to come. You're fun. But honestly, some Fridays I'm just too damn tired to do anything but eat some dinner and go to bed. I will, in all likelihood, come next time. I'll even bring other people and buy CDs. But don't start hanging out with this bunch if you want my time. It makes you so much less attractive."

"Fair enough," it said. "I'll catch you later."

That left one more thing to be dealt with, a date with my wife, a romantic evening, just the two of us out on the town, maybe dressed up a little, for once not taking each other for granted. This was a good idea, and one I'd meant to follow up on. I said as much, but the date remained silent.

I let that silence settle for a moment before I realized what was wanted. A date. Name a date. Make a reservation. Be proactive. Be thoughtful.

"How about tomorrow night?," I said, and waited for the answer.

October 21st, 2003 - There was a fire at Rob's house. It didn't actually get to the apartment on the top floor that he shares with his boyfriend Drayton, but there was smoke damage, enough that a faint campfire smell trailed him through the office all day today. He thought maybe it was his shoes. I thought probably it was his shoes and his bag and maybe his pants too.

It reminded me of the camping trip Brittney and I met on, which is, of course, a happy memory, and I felt a little bad for deriving some small happiness from Rob's misery. I like Rob.

When a house catches fire one of the first things the firemen do when they show up is cut a hole in the roof so the heat inside the building doesn't build up, stoking the flames. And this is exactly what they did at Rob's place. They punched a big old hole in the roof and dropped down into his attic apartment, the apartment he was lucky not to be in at the time because it's an illegal apartment, not meeting the minimum standards for fire safety. It only has one exit, and according to the fire code, living spaces must have two unblocked egresses in case of fire. Egress is the word the fire people use when they mean 'way out.'

After dropping through the hole they'd punched in the roof and into Rob's attic fire trap, the firemen worked around the perimeter of the space tearing walls down to see if the fire had gotten in amongst the studs and joists. This, apparently, is how fires spread, in walls.

In order to get to the walls, they had to move furniture, because as it so happens that against the wall is just about the best place to put furniture. And also, they didn't really move the furniture as you or I would, that is carefully and deliberately. Rather they tore the furniture away from the walls, so they could tear the walls away from themselves. For this reason, much of Rob and Drayton's furniture was badly damaged in addition to being smoked.

Rob is quite the urban Martha Stewart, and in addition to all sorts of crafts (Including furniture building. Many of the pieces that were damaged he had made himself.) he is also quite the cook. He reports having been saddened to sift back through the plaster strewn apartment and find the shattered remains of some recently made jam as well as broken jars that contained his homemade pickled beets.

He also reports having sat in front of his smoking home mixing martinis and generally drowning his sorrows just as the firemen were drowning whatever remaining flames flickered away in the lower floors of the house. It sounds, as the kids might say, like a bad scene.

Over the weekend he and Drayton camped at their friends Jon and Chrystie's apartment, there in Jamaica Plain. Yesterday they moved in with Rob's sister in Wilmington where they will stay for two weeks while they try to find a new place back in the city. They are, as he said, both very home-oriented type people, so this little stretch of homelessness is stressful for them as you can well imagine.

I didn't know what to say to Rob. I got the sense he was sick of talking about it already, though everyone felt compelled to come up and tell him how sorry they were. I didn't do any better than anyone else. It struck me that I might do well to figure out what one good thing to say in these situations is, because life seems full of them. Someone finds out they have cancer. Someone else's house burns up. To his credit, Rob appeared very even keeled and even smiled at me as I babbled my sympathies.

Truthfully, I fear for him. I fear that he'll put on the brave face for a few weeks, maybe even long enough to get set up in a new place, but then he'll start to feel sad for the things he's lost, the cabinets he built and decorated, the things handed down from his parents and grandparents. I fear all this will creep up on him long after he expects it to, long after people have stopped wandering up and telling him how sorry they are.

I hope that doesn't happen. I hope my inability to come up with that one good thing to say is emblematic of my larger inability to really empathize with Rob, to understand what he's gone through and so to understand what's still to come for him. Maybe that's what makes people so sad for someone who experiences a tragedy, not that they've suffered in some way but rather that they are, if only temporarily, alone with whatever's happened to them. And how do you say you know what they're going through when you don't?

October 20th, 2003 - I'm trying not to buy any books for a little while. The relative affordability of hard cover tomes from Half.com or Powells.com has led me to a somewhat crack-like addiction. In the last three months I've picked up: Life of Pi by Yann Martel, a book my friend Brian Donohue insisted I get; The Satanic Verses, one of the few Salman Rushdie's I've not read; Cannery Row, I had to get after loving The Grapes of Wrath; Lucy Sullivan is Getting Married, Last Chance Saloon and Angels, all by Marian Keys, and all for Brittney; Ambassador of the Dead, by Askold Melnyczuk the first person who praised my writing without having to; A Bar in Brooklyn, by Andrei Codrescu whom I've written about in this space a number of times; The Green Man, by Kingsley Amis; Humboldt's Gift by Saul Bellow; and a few others that I devoured and then wedged onto an already packed shelf for display.

It's not my fault, this addiction. Like alcoholism or bad knees, it's genetic. I get it from my mother, who has read absolutely everything you're supposed to have read and far too many things that no one else ever dreamed of reading. She buys books to read. She buys books just to have. She buys books that she has to hide under the bed in the guest room so my father doesn't see that she's bought more god damned books.

And like my mother I appreciate books both as reading material and as objets d'art. What's more tasteful to decorate with than a bookshelf full of high-falootin' books? What better way to demonstrate your pointy-headedness to friends and visitors? How else to remind yourself you're a very cultured and thoughtful soul? That's why I buy more hardcover than paperback, because I want something worthy of display.

But before you start thinking I'm all shallow (I am), I'm also voraciously curious. I want to read everything, which is not possible of course and also leads to buying lots of books on-line that I've lost curiosity about by the time the package shows up in the mail so that I end up with a towering pile of reading material next to the bed and little inclination to draw from the bottom of the stack. It's hard to stay ahead of the curiosity curve, though I am getting better at differentiating between books I am genuinely curious about and those I simply want to have read.

In this way I've stashed both the Best American Essays 2002 AND the Best American Travel Writing 2002. The Satanic Verses is there too, as is Disgrace by J.M Coetzee and Master and Commander, the first in that series of sea shanties by that guy who died a couple years ago. A friend sent me that one. Oh, and Anna Karenina, which I got at a flea market while we were on the Cape on vacation. It's this 1943 edition with all these wispy, two color illustrations in it. I got it for 3 bucks.

And so, since I've resolved not to buy any more books for a spell, I'm working my way through this stack, starting with Anna Karenina. It's long, and promises to bog down in spots, so I've decided I'll read Disgrace at some point in the middle, just to break it up. After that I'll do Satanic Verses, assuming I can psych myself up for another monster. If not, I'll pick at some of the stories in Best American Travel Writing. Those are like candy.

It all makes me wish I was a speed reader, or that I could digest the contents of a book simply by touching the cover in some quasi-spiritual way, like a Shaker poet (were there any?) fingering the Bible. That way I could fill in some of the cracks in my reading past, like the big, important Hemingways I never got to or the W. Somerset Maugham that I always think I'm going to read but always pass over for something more contemporary and less English.

If I play my cards right, working through the pile next to the bed then pulling some of the unread volumes from the shelves, stuff like A New History of Wales and an Antartic travel memoir by Reinhold Messner, I think I can read nearly for free up to Christmastime when I can ask my mother to get me a small pile of books.

Since Dad retired, she's been working at Barnes and Noble where an employee discount and the ability to cherry pick the very best stuff coming in at the shipping dock and across the used book counter has led to more than one set-to with my still very baffled father.

Anyway, until then I'll be making my list and checking it twice. If you've got anything you really think I ought to consider drop me a line. All I ask is that you leave off self-help (I'm beyond help after all) and military histories.

October 18th, 2003 - Yesterday at lunchtime I walked over to Super 88, an oriental supermarket perched on the Mass Pike just across from Chinatown. They sell several different brands of Genmaicha there, the green tea with brown rice that is my tea of choice, especially for morning consumption.

Now last time I went to Super 88 I walked out with kimchi base, jasmine tea, shrimp crackers, a bag of dried shitakes and this curious, chewy candy called White Rabbit that purports to taste like sweetened milk and comes in an edible paper wrapper. I forget what I went in for.

Somewhat predictably you don't see a lot of caucasians in Super 88 because, in addition to being quite foreign in its product selection, it is also very unlike the immaculate grocery megaplexes we tend to shop in.

Super 88 smells. It's smells of dried fish and mushrooms. It smells of straw packing material and unwashed produce. The tea aisle offers up a multifarious melange of aromas emanating from a stunning panoply of painted tins and heavily charactered cardboard boxes.

At Super 88 they're not really into merchandising. In the back there is a massive case with fresh fish on ice, no decorative kale or pile of lemons for color. Just fish behind plexiglass. In front of the case are plastic crates with still more fish, one with blue crabs. You can buy anchovies fresh, dried, pickled, salted or in paste form. The housewares aisle is a rainbow of cheap ceramics, nested in straw in white cardboard boxes.

When I first walked in, I tried to look like I knew what I was doing. I made straight for the aisle with the sign above it that said, 'TEA.' But of course I was in the wrong place. They've got one section for tea powders and mixes and another, on another aisle, for bags and leaves. Eventually I found the Genmaicha and put it in my basket. I also grabbed a box of 'pure ginger tea.' Heck, why not?

Then I commenced to wandering, guided by a vague sense of wanting dried mushrooms and maybe some rice noodles, but giving myself some time to explore. I had eaten lunch at my desk around 11am, so I gave myself half-an-hour to poke around. Noticing a wall of canned fish products, I struggled to figure out what I was looking at. Fortunatley some of the cans had an English word or two to tip me off, and others had pictures that served as strong suggestion, if not conclusive proof, of contents. Before I knew what I was really doing, I dropped cans of fried, salted cockles, whole razor clams and spiced octopus in my basket. The latter turned out to be a Spanish concoction, though it was also labelled in what I think are Chinese characters.

Next I located some rice noodle nests which I thought might serve as happy homes for the salted cockles or even the octopus, and moved on in search of mushrooms. I mean, as long as you're eating something as flagrantly fragrant as canned fish you might as well bring some fungus into the mix, right?

I got a big, cheap bag of dried mushrooms that I could't quite identify as any of the varieties I'd had before. The pictograms on the back indicated I might want to boil them on their own before putting them in a soup or noodle dish.

I am, lest it's not been patently obvious, an adventurous eater, and Super 88 is sort of like the Northwest Passage or the culinary equivalent of Coronado, the city of gold. I spent the rest of my lunch hour pacing the aisles, mouth agape, feeling like the silly white boy under the bemused eye of the Asian stock clerks.

Other treasures I found at Super 88 but did not buy: whole, dried octopus; bitter gourd tea powder; liter-sized, super sweet thai iced coffee; canned, salted croaker; beef flavored wheat gluten; chilled grass jelly drink.

On my way to the register I picked up a can of 'Milk Flavored Tea Drink' that was a strong brew of assam leaves, condensed milk and sugar. Near the lip of the container, beneath a picture of a garbage can, it said "Care Environment with Good Manner," meaning 'don't litter.' How could I resist?

Finally laying my choices on the little conveyor belt at the check out, the woman working the register picked up my Genmaicha and examined it. "Japanese tea?" she said wrinkling her nose in confusion.

"Yeah," I replied somewhat sheepishly. "It's green tea with brown rice. It's very good."

"Very good," she echoed, smiling. She shook her head in wonder and dropped it in the plastic bag with the cockles and octopus.

October 16th, 2003 - Why do I care about baseball? Or more importantly why, right now, does everyone in this city care about baseball? In Beantown, the Yankees versus the Red Sox plays out like republican versus democrat, capitalism versus communism, good versus evil.

The mailman drives by with the game on a small transistor. The woman taking money at the coffee place says, "Thank you, GO SOX!" as people hand over their dollars. No less than five people have said to me, "You know, I hate baseball, but I really want the Sox to win."

Why is that?

The reluctant pop-sociologist in me thinks it's some sort of modern manifestation of tribal loyalty. Despite coming from various countries and an eclectic mix of US states, the Red Sox somehow represent our values, our interests. When they win, Boston wins. We're all just that little bit more prosperous.

In fact, even when the Sox lose Boston wins, because we, as a city, draw closer to each other in loss than we do in victory. Note the patriotic feeling and concern for neighborly need circulating after the September 11th attacks. When we win it's a magical thing. When we lose we come together to heal. The more losing we do the stronger our group identity becomes, our unity forged by hurt.

Look at the Yankees. Look at their fans. Do they celebrate when they win? Of course they do. But they don't celebrate like we do, like we will. They expect to win. They revel in their superiority, as well they should. But the more they win, the less joy they take from winning.

For decades now, we've assumed the role of underdog, the city that always plays second fiddle to New York. And yet we stand hard and fast behind our team, behind our city, waiting and biding our time until it's our turn to win.

And it's not just about city versus city either, because, as many New Yorkers will point out, Boston is a provincial sort of town. Our values are not uniquely urban, but rather uniquely regional. In Kennebunk, Maine and Rutland, Vermont there are Red Sox fans, those who embrace the same ideals as the folks who pace the asphalt on Beacon Hill and the Back Bay, to say nothing of the suburbs, north, south and west.

So baseball, and this series in particular, is compelling because it sets up a classic battle between ideals, urban versus provincial, stylish versus practical, decadent versus austere. Even people who hate baseball have ideals, and if they live here in New England the likelihood is they share some of these basic values with the rest of us. They love the Red Sox because they believe in what the team stands for. Or rather they love the team because they believe the team, in some abstract way, stands for them.

Or maybe that's a bunch of crap. Maybe non-baseball fans just understand that the people who deliver their mail and sell them coffee will be happier if the Red Sox win, and that, by extension, they too will be happier. Or maybe there are enough freaks who understand the difference between a sinker and a slider that we've simply achieved critical baseball loving mass.

Me? I fall somewhere in the middle. To me, baseball is my ten-year-old self, the one who sat quietly with the Encyclopedia of Baseball Statistics memorizing that Mel Ott, a player I never once saw swing a bat, was tenth on the all-time career batting average list. Baseball was not only a hobby then. It was the language I spoke. Even the currency I exchanged with my friends was baseball, dusty dog-eared cards depicting players and still smelling of petrified bubble gum.

These days I hardly keep up with the game, but I understand it. I know the difference between a fielder's choice and an infield hit. I know the history and the tradition. I get it. Deep down I think I care about baseball right now, because the city, the region, needs a win. People feel beaten down by the war in Iraq, the threat of terrorism, the apathy of our leadership and the continued lethargy of the economy. We need to see that our values mean something, even if that something is just baseball, as if our ten-year-old selves had it right all along and we've only just lost our way.

October 15th, 2003 - Yesterday was a tough day. That's why yesterday's entry was somewhat negative. OK...completely negative. The truth is it's good to be home and good to be back at work and good to be putting out a magazine which addresses a topic in which I have no small interest.

And so today I thought I'd make a list of all the things I enjoy about my every day, the things I manage to be happy about even on days I go to work and come home and go to bed just like the rest of the world.

Here they are, in roughly chronological order:

1) My naked wife. At the risk of being too candid, I have to tell you in all sincerity that any day you get to wake up next to a beautiful naked woman has to go in life's plus column. I no longer wonder where the phrase 'domestic bliss' comes from.

2) The wagging-tailed dog. I love the damn dog despite myself. He's just so happy to see that I'm awake. Sometimes it's a bit too much, but how can you complain about being loved. You can't.

3) Reading on the train. The train sucks. The train is full of crazy people and their human detritus. But the train affords me nearly an hour a day of dedicated reading time, and for that I am grateful.

4) The view of the Boston skyline from the Longfellow Bridge as the red line passes over the Charles River. I've written about this enough here in my blog that I won't bore you with it again. Suffice it to say the city is beautiful and inspiring. It makes me feel both small and a part of something at the same time.

5) The smell wafting down Albany Street from Quinzani's Bakery. Quinzani's makes these horrible, elementary school cafeteria quality bread products, loaves of nutritionless white and tasteless dinner rolls, but when all you're taking in is the smell, who really cares? I catch that fresh-baked scent in the breeze upon arriving and again upon exiting the office.

6) The first cup of tea. I am partial to this oriental green tea/brown rice mix called Genmaicha. People think I'm some sort of hippy-dippy food freak, but I don't care. Tea is good in my belly.

7) Getting paid. My employer cuts me a check weekly. It's just the sort of constant positive reinforcement I need to go on happily prostituting my talents to the unfeeling powers of academic publishing. It's a pittance next to what Brittney makes, but that just makes me all the more grateful for it...and her.

8) Arriving home. Every time I approach our house, either by car or on foot I look up at what is, after all, a fairly large structure and think, "Holy shit! We own that! No one is going to make us move out!" It's nice to have a place, you know?

9) My home office. Just last night I laid on the couch Brittney bought me as an anniversary gift and looked around my little home office. I've got my computer and other little digital whirligigs. I've got my record collection and stereo. I have books. Last night I even had the little TV from the guest room so I could watch playoff baseball while I worked.

10) Reading in bed. Ditto everything I said above about reading on the train, except without the crazies, urine and vomitus. Also, much more comfortable than the duct tape-repaired seats that line the walls of those charming little subway cars.

11) My naked wife. At the end of every hard day I am rewarded by the arrival of a beautiful naked woman in my bed. Now, I have no interest in becoming a suicide bomber, but my wife in all her non-sartorial splendor would serve as ample motivation, forget about the auditorium full of virgins all those whackos overseas are working for.

12) Sleep. Blissful sleep. That's where I'm a Viking.

October 14th, 2003 - I have been away again. I was in New York, mid-state, in the Finger Lakes, on Lake Seneca, at an inn overlooking the water, an inn next to a gorge with a waterfall in it. Brittney's brother Rob was married there, by the falls, to a woman named Elizabeth whose parents live near by. It was beautiful, the lake, the inn, the gorge, the falls and the wedding. But now I am back.

And now that I'm back I wish I was away again. Away is beautiful. Back is just busy.

Back is back at the office with conference calls and schedules to update and invoices to check on and meetings to attend and bad news to break and occassionally a short walk around the corner for a sandwich. Back is back to the magazine which I've been up late writing and editing and cropping pictures for. Back is back to dog walking and things that need doing but can't get done because of too much office and magazine work.

Away is oysters and sunsets and weddings and waterfalls. Back is drudgery. Away is sand in my shoes and dinner with my friends. Back is responsibility and the little flashing light on the phone that means 'voice mail.'

Away is good. Back is bad.

I am back.

October 7th, 2003 - There was a man. He was of medium height and slight build. He was sensitive and intelligent, and he worried a lot, mainly because it was in his nature to do so.

He wanted to be a writer, and so he got himself a part-time job and devoted the rest of his time to writing. Though the schedule was somewhat hectic, what with being in the office to deal with clients and vendors and co-workers and also trying to track down sources for the stories that would fill his portfolio, he earned enough for his basic bills, and took some small solace from that.

This man went away on vacation and sized up his life and decided that, though he worried a lot, things were going pretty well. He plotted new ways to steal time for writing and he jotted down fresh ideas to explore in those stolen moments. He went home feeling good about life.

But it's funny how life conspires against a guy.

Back from vacation, the man's day job suddenly became very hectic. A family commitment beckoned. He found himself on a particularly tight deadline with a series of articles he was writing for a magazine that didn't pay him particularly well or on time.

Ideas rotted on the vine. Enthusiasm dried up and blew away in the autumn wind. The man was tired and worried more than ever. He struggled to maintain the perspective he'd gained on his vacation.

And then he remembered that he had options. A man could miss deadlines. He could quit jobs. He could change his life radically with a series of phone calls, brief conversations with people who demanded too much of him and gave him too little credit. He sat at his desk and stared at the telephone. He put his hand on the receiver and brushed his fingers over the numbered buttons.

The man smiled to himself. He turned and looked out the window. And this is how he went on.

* Please note, any resemblance to real life persons and events is entirely coincidental

October 5th, 2003 - I'm back. We're back. Brittney and I.

It was magicalfantastic. It was morewonderfulthanexpected. It was like eating the best sandwich you've ever eaten over and over again and still being hungry and so eating more really great sandwiches.

In actuality what I ate was clams. Fried clams. Raw clams. Clam rolls. Clams with tartar sauce. Clams with cocktail sauce. Clam strips. Clam fritters. Steamer clams. Clam chowder. With a side of fries. With a squeeze of lemon. On a buttered and grilled hot dog bun. With an actually-very-handy handy wipe on the plasticky tray next to the pile of napkins. With a lemonade. With a Dr. Pepper. With a little bit of sand crunching in my teeth. Right now, in shallow waters up and down the Cape, clams are passing composite sketches of me and burroughing just that little bit deeper in their sandy sea beds.

I gained five pounds in a week. When I wasn't eating clams I was eating oysters. Roughly 4 dozen, raw. Another 2 dozen fried. There were fish and chips too. Some lobster chowder. A bit of gumbo. Blue fish and striped bass that Brian caught even as I heckled him from the porch of the house. It it had gills and came near me, I ate it.

In fact, it's like this. Don't look for the ocean on postcards. Don't sniff for salty air anymore. Don't plan to go to the beach. The ocean is gone. I ate it. Sorry. I was hungry.

The food is only part of the story though. I read books. Good books. I watched baseball. Some good. Some bad. I cast a fishing line and caught nothing. I walked on the beach with Brittney and the dog. I hiked through the dunes with my friend Charlie (and we sat on a remote tidal flat and shucked oysters he'd plucked from the sand with the knife he'd thrown in his pack just in case). I went bird-watching and threw the baseball around with Brian. I made salad and burned some French toast and washed a lot of dishes.

I stared at the water and thought about nothing at all. I stared at the water and thought about what I've made of my life and what I will make of it still.

I watched the sun set several times. I did not rise in time to see it do the same. This was neither surprising or disappointing. I was tired from eating all those clams.

There's more to say, but I haven't processed it all yet. I just wanted to get you this advance report so you wouldn't think I had finally made good on promises to go away on vacation and not come back.

September 25th, 2003 - Vacation. We are going on vacation. Sing it from the mountaintops. Blow on that giant, Swiss horn from the Ricola commercial. Hand out fliers. Put it on Craig's List. Whisper it in the marketplace. Send a carrier pidgeon. Hire a sky writer. Tap it out in Morse Code. W-E-A-R-E-O-U-T-O-F-H-E-R-E!

Ms. Jenkins take a note! I want to send a telegram! It should go like this: Dear Friends and Family STOP We've had enough of this working bullshit STOP Will be at the beach STOP Don't call STOP We won't be answering STOP If we don't return, sell our stuff and forward the cash STOP We love you STOP John and Brittney STOP.

This is the yearly escape to the Cape, complete with fried seafood, sand in the sheets and the obligatory chuckling as Brian Donohue leaves the house in waders at midnight. Catch us some blues, Bryo!

For me, the real highlight of the Cape vacation is being able to sit on some quaint, screened-in porch overlooking the water with my entire face buried deep in a book. I'm taking a stack of novels with me. Life of Pi, because Brian Donohue told me to read it. Ambassador of the Dead, because my writing instructor from college, Askold Melnyczuk, wrote it. And Cannery Row, because John Steinbeck is the best American writer ever, hands down and don't even mention Hemingway because I'm not listening. I suspect Brian Donohue prefers Papa Hemingway, but I can forgive him this romantic idea. Brian is, after all, a fisherman.

So for the short term anyway, this space will be inert. I am very seriously considering writing a vacation log though, and rather than just boring everyone with a straight ahead accounting of Cape-side happenings, "The smell of fish guts is overwhelming. We made Brian sleep outside again," I'm thinking I'll write it up as if I was one of those horribly bourgeois English explorers of the 19th century, the ones who went on safari with a crew of 100 natives carrying their bathtub and dining room table while pretending to be roughing it. I'm pretty bourgeois anyway, so it shouldn't be such a stretch.

We'll see how it goes. If it's any good, I'll post it here. If it's bad, I'll probably still post it here. What else am I gonna do?

September 23rd, 2003 - "Excuse me, I don't mean to bother you, but can I ask a question about chicken bouillon?" This is me at the info desk at the grocery store down the street last night. I'm on a crusade, a smiling, self-congratulatory crusade to let the folks at Wild Oats (yes, that's the name of the store) know just how badly they're managing things. The campaign began with a couple of pedantic e-mails to the folks in customer service to inform them that recent renovations and rearrangements of stock have made their store just about the worst place to buy groceries on planet Earth.

Now I'm on to chicken bouillon.

"Sure," says the smiling manager, leaning attentively across the counter to address my question.

"Well," I start, feigning naivete, "is it possible that the chicken bouillon is in its own little section, separate from the many varieties of vegetable bouillon you have on offer?"

A puzzled look crosses the manager's face. She's coming from behind the info desk. We're walking together toward the soup aisle. This is more than I could have hoped for. We arrive in front of the bouillon.

"See, there are eight different kinds of veggie bouillon here," I point out, "but no chicken bouillon. And I know that chicken bouillon is really just about the most popular kind, so I was wondering if maybe you've started keeping it someplace else."

"No," she says. "It would be here." She is examining labels, shifting boxes from right to left, looking behind stacks and stacks of "Herb Medley" for a packet with poultry on the front. But she might as well be searching for golden eggs, because there's no chicken bouillon here. I knew that when I went to the counter.

Now I'm laying it on thick.

"Is it possible that they person who orders soups for you has some personal objection to chicken bouillon?" I ask.

"Actually, no," she laughs. "He's pretty much a meat and potatoes guy, so I don't think that's it."

"And there's no ethical objection to chicken bouillon that I should be aware of, is there?," I ask, adding, "other than that whole vegetarian thing?"

"Not that I know of," she says, and this is where my nerve starts fail. She's so earnest. She's saying something about the manufacturers of the vegetable bouillon possibly also offering a chicken product that they could order. She is pulling packets off the shelf to give to her soup guy, so that he can order some of what I want.

Rather than thanking her and walking away though, I decide to push just that little bit further.

"I'm not sure if you're aware," I say, "but vegetable broth pretty much sucks. It's just about the worst thing you can find to make soup with. I mean, don't get me wrong (what an ass I am), I love vegetables. They're tasty and good for you and all that, but they don't make a good soup."

And rather than tipping her off to the fact that I'm really just a self-satisfied pain in the ass, this last comment somehow makes us friends. "Yeah. Veggie broth sucks," she chuckles before reiterating her commitment to get some packets of powdered chicken essence on the shelf lickety-split.

I thank her. My head is spinning with glee. I walk away to try to find Brittney who has better things to do than harrass grocery store managers. I find her in the tea aisle, reading the boxes to find out which brew will help her get to sleep at night. She rolls her eyes as I recount my experience with the store manager.

Onward we shop.

September 22nd, 2003 - This morning I had an errand, to pick Brittney's new violin up from the instrument repair shop over by Symphony Hall. I left a little early, hoping to get there when they open at 9am so I would still have time to walk uptown to the office by 10am.

I was right on time, which is how I am. I think I was born with a sixth sense for timing, one I got from my father. Then again, Dad is invariably early. Me? I can take the bus to the train to another train, walk up around the corner and arrive on the doorstop of the music shop at 9am on the nose.

I shoved my paperback into my back pack and pushed through the front door, strolling past the brass and woodwinds to where the fiddles hang in their display case. Just there the luthiers have their little closet-sized offices filled with files and rasps and clamps. A guy with a beard and a ponytail looked up from a French horn to ask if I could be helped.

That question always makes me smile. I am so clearly beyond help.

Still, I said, "Yeah, I'm here to pick up that fiddle," pointing to the square, brown case resting on the workbench in the next cubicle, still locked and dark.

He frowned a quick, unconscious frown, an expression that told me all I needed to know. The guy next door wasn't in yet, though he should be. He smiled, recovering himself, unlocked the door and pulled a note off the case.

"It says it's not quite ready to go yet. He wanted another guy to look at it," he announced.

I asked if the guy who needed to look at it was coming in this morning, and he told me that he was, that he'd be in shortly, that if I wanted to go and get a cup of coffee and come back, he'd be there.

So I did. I walked down the block and forked out a bill and some coins for a paper cup full of boiling hot liquid. Then I strolled back up and past the music shop to sit on the Symphony Hall steps and watch people walk by. A guy in a bright orange shirt swept construction dirt off the sidewalk slowly and deliberately.

It's nice to watch the city do it's thing, to see things getting cleaned and dirtied, people scurrying for buses and trains, students schlepping bags and books into big gray buildings, everyone carrying a coffee or smoking a cigarette or both.

Then Larry walked by, he's the guy that sold us the violin two Saturdays ago. He's young with sunglasses pinning back spikey, gelled hair. He dresses more hip-hop than chamber music, but he knew his stuff when he laid the polished fiddles out on felt for us, explaining which ones were German and which Chinese.

I presumed it was him that needed to bless the luthier's work now. He too had his bags and his coffee. He skittered by on late legs, sweating at the temples. He didn't even see me sitting there. I decided to give him a few minutes head start, a chance to mumble some apologies to the guy with the ponytail and to throw his stuff behind the counter.

When I finally got up and followed him into the shop he didn't even say hello. He just said, "It's all set to go," wiping the sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand.

"Tell Brittney it's got more bottom end now. We balanced it, but it has more gusto in the bass now. Tell her to play the shit out of it, and see how she likes it, and just to bring it back if she wants to adjust it."

I walked out with the case slung over my shoulder, suddenly aware that it feels pretty cool to walk around near Symphony Hall with what is clearly an instrument. The sun glasses and coffee cup made me look like that hip young musician type, sort of disheveled and harried and too low key to be bothered with anything but his art. Or at least that's how I pictured myself.

For half a minute I considered blowing work off for the day and going to the Museum of Fine Arts just a few blocks West on Huntington Ave. Then my sense of responsibility got the better of me. I was running a little late at that point, but I resolved to stroll to the office rather than jumping on the train or trying to catch some crosstown bus. A nascent lack of ambition has me less worried about showing up to work late these days. No one seems to have noticed.

So I had time to do some more people watching and to look at the hodge-podge of architecture the city throws together, a row of classic brownstones end-capped by a church that's been converted to condos, then a church that's still a church, with stained glass and an old stone face. There were men sitting in the garden adjoining the South End library, reading their books waiting for the librarian to come and unlock the door. An old Chinese guy jogged past me in long pants and a sports coat, out for his morning exercise.

It's amazing how happy I can be just walking through the city by myself. In a way it's like a museum unto itself, maybe a gallery of urban, contemporary art, with exhibits made of garbage and performance pieces by bums in winter coats despite the Indian summer. I should stand on a corner and charge admission, maybe sell those headphone tours and give out little buttons, the ones with the bendy metal tabs.

When I finally, sadly got to work, my boss looked at the violin case and said, "You brought in your Uzi today? I guess I won't fuck with you." I smiled my polite, that's-really-not-very-funny smile, turned on my computer and started to work.

September 18th, 2003 - All my life I've sought out omens. And yes, I realize this practice flies in the face of the atheistic and skeptical approach I normally take. I pretend not to wonder about life's mysteries and the unknowableness of the future, all the while I look for the circling hawk, the curious cloud pattern or the serendipitously timed event, the confluence of random circumstance. I want to see the ghost in the machine. I want religion, but with a book that's easier to follow. Show me a sign, any sign, and I'm ripe for the taking.

Once, on my way to a business meeting in California, I sped past a dead deer in my plasticky little rental car. Double-taking in the rear view mirror, I became convinced the meeting would go badly. It did, though that might have had more to do with my woeful lack of preparation than any rotting side of venison.

Sometimes I actually see an omen but have no idea what it might portend. For example, yesterday I left the office and began walking to the train station when I turned the corner and spied a man standing on the corner of the street curling a pair of dumbells. When he was done, he tossed them in the back of a nearby car, tucked in his shirt and walked away.

It had to mean something, didn't it? Was it that I would soon face a struggle in my day-to-day routine? Was it that I needed to exert a bit more effort at work? Or was it simply that this guy wanted to pump up his beach muscles before going to see his girlfriend?

Last weekend we went for a hike with some friends, and one of the guys who came along, Paul, bought the National Enquirer at the little country market near the trailhead (Paul is British and the Enquirer, I think, reaffirms his belief that Americans are basically naive). He took great delight in reading our horoscopes to us on the way home. Then he read the list of "lucky numbers" at the end of Taurus, his own sign, and they happened to correspond exactly with his own lucky numbers (yes, he has lucky numbers), 4,11,29,32, or something like that. He took it as a sign, and as soon as we got back to the house he toddled off down the road to buy a lottery ticket. He also bought a bunch of beer, which seemed a much more practical thing to do.

The truth is that most of us live somewhere between science and religion, unable to grasp what either Einstein or St. Paul was trying to get across. And even those of us who fancy ourselves above the fray, who disdain people of faith, need to find a reason to get out of bed in the morning. In my case, it's sometimes just to see a guy pumping iron on a street corner by the Expressway. And other times it's to find out that this is an auspicious month for Capricorns. A romantic risk might just bear fruit.

Somewhere, Einstein is alive and buying a lottery ticket for a prize he knows, statistically, he has no chance of winning. It convinces me that all omens mean the same thing: Live now. Die later.

September 16th, 2003 - My friend Shawn brings up a good question. "When does the inner teen-ager leave the back of your mind?" My friends and I have been dancing around this question for what seems like about a decade. We don't ever actually discuss it in any depth, but it permeates our behavior, the clothes we wear, the music we buy, the food we eat. We are all in deep denial about impending middle age. This is the pre-life crisis that requires us to buy crappy new punk records instead of shiny new sports cars. That comes later.

For me, things came to a head in New York about a month back (see August 10th entry). I schlepped down on the Fung Wah Bus (a very teen-age way to travel) to see Shawn and his wife Rachel while they were in the country visiting for a few weeks. Normally, they live in Jakarta (a very teen-age place to live).

Anyway, Shawn and Brian, who lives in New Jersey and just bought a house (no teen-age points there), gave me a hard time for wearing Birkenstocks, which they believe should only be worn by irritating hippy types and Germans. I protested that my black, cork-bedded sandals are just about the most comfortable footwear I own. I tried to take the high road of substance over the low road of style. We're not angry teenagers anymore, I offered. Isn't it time we stopped pretending we're not yuppies, I pleaded.

Apparently not. Apparently we should maintain the charade. Apparently it's important. I struggled with it for a while, trying to affect a pose of mature superiority, but the thing is, they're right.

I do feel like a goofball when I put those damn things on. I still wear them, but they remind me I'm not cool anymore, as if I needed reminding, as if I was ever cool in the first place. Furthermore, there are parts of me that really genuinely believe that clothes and footwear and crap like that are unimportant. Truthfully, my list of guilty pleasures has grown so long I need a database to track new entries, and my capacity for guilt over eating tofu or buying a pair of sandals is greatly diminished.

And that reminds me of something else Shawn said when we were in New York. He said that irony as a form of humor is no longer particularly clever or interesting. So the way we used to have disco parties operating on the the premise that it was funny because everyone knows disco sucks, no longer really works. It's just not funny to pretend to like something that is obviously bad anymore. It comes off as snotty, supercilious even.

At the time I argued that it wasn't so much that irony was dead, but rather that we've all just come to grips with the fact that disco is good, that shaking your moneymakers isn't stupid, but somehow cathartic and, brace yourself, even fun. In fact, there is good to be found in most of the things we once held out as wholly and unredeemably bad.

So maybe the problem is not that we can't get the inner teen-ager out of the backs of our minds, it's that we've poked a hole in our senses of humor where irony once filtered out the tacitly uncool and legitimized the pursuit of guilty pleasures. The inner teen-ager has never moved. He's just wearing Birkenstocks now and listening to the BeeGees. Oh, and he's confused as hell about it.

And Shawn was also right when he said, "You know you were thinking, 'I'm going to get shit for this' when you bought them Berkies." The only thing is, I still don't really know why...

September 14th, 2003 - Sometimes it's enough to wake up on a Sunday morning with the sun forcing its way around the edges of the blinds, the dog wagging his tail by the side of the bed, and know that you've got a whole day in front of you to read the paper and curse the state of the lawn. Sometimes it's enough to shoot down to the grocery store and pile a cart high with fruit and juice and eggs and cereal and go back to the house to put together an epic breakfast, dancing past my beautiful wife to get to the fridge or the stove.

And on days like this it seems like you can throw any old CD in the deck and remember exactly why you bought it, and you can walk right past the laundry that needs to get done and the bed that needs to get made and think to yourself that it can stay unmade. You might, after all, get back in it later.

On other days I can look at my wife's face until it disappears, until it stops being a face altogether and disolves into a blur with a voice coming out of it, my attention riveted instead on bits of junk mail or a bag of potato chips. On Sundays though I see her even when she's not in the room. I look at the dried toothpaste plastered on the edge of the sink and smile. I see her in the twist of sheets she's left in the bed.

On Sundays I can be religious without ever going to church. There's something sacred in the Tobasco I coat my scrambled eggs with, the blood of some secular sinner, sacrificed for the good of breakfasts everywhere. There's a holy spirit to the extra-fat, morning paper, other people's ideas delivered to my front door step by an unseen stranger, moving in the night, like a modern, virgin birth.

On Sundays I could write all day, but I don't.

September 12th, 2003 - So yesterday, when I was all full of piss and vinegar over the state of the union, and you were busy doing something more worthwhile than reading what I had to say about it, I also mentioned that I had a beef with corporate America. In fact, I affected the tone of some low-grade socialist party leaflet in doing so, and then, instead of following my thesis with some supporting material, I skipped that idea all together and instead made some very breathy, if not sincere, pronouncements about America's failure to come to grips with the tragedies of September 11th. It was all very dramatic, and if you had read it you would, no doubt, have snickered a little and said to yourself, "that Lewis, always taking himself so seriously."

So today I want to do two things. First I want to apologize for getting all heavy and self-righteous. Then I want to make good on my promise to explain what I don't like about working in the corporate environment. Also, I will do my best not to pontificate, but rather to say in plain language what I mean. I am, after all, not a socialist, or even a very convincing malcontent. I'm just a little bit lazy and a little bit demanding, both at the same time. It's a charming combination if you give it half a chance.

So here it is: I don't like working in offices with co-workers and supervisors because there are too many people who are dishonest about what they do and how they feel, and it makes the whole enterprise just a little too taxing for a simpleton like me.

I'm what's called a "straight shooter," a "what-you-see-is-what-you-get" kind of guy. I say what I mean, promise what I think I can deliver and apologize when I screw up. And this is what I expect of those I work with and for, including clients.

Now I am engaged in this publishing project at a tiny little place downtown where we perform 'editorial services' for big academic publishers. I am a project manager, overseeing the creation and editing of manuscript, tracking the flow of materials from one point to another and acting as liaison to the client. It is a job that requires much planning, foresight and communication. I am reasonably well suited to the work, though it is clearly not my life's calling.

The project is going poorly. After agreeing to a schedule at the outset, the client has failed to deliver on time a single piece of the material we need to perform our services. They have simultaneously and steadfastly refused to give us more time to do our work. Each week they make a fresh set of promises aimed at getting things back on track, and each week they break their promises, all the while ratcheting up the pressure on our team of writers, editors and project managers.

Now. Don't jump to conclusions. I know what you're thinking. You're thinking that this is how things go, that I have only summarized the way projects of every sort play themselves out in offices all over the globe, from small publishing houses in Boston to database development houses in Bangalore.

And you are right. This IS how things go. We, as humans, are optimistic about what can be accomplished in a relatively short period of time. It is in our nature. My problem is not with the breaking of promises or with the missing of deadlines. I don't hold anyone to a standard higher than the one to which I hold myself.

My problem is the dishonesty that often goes along with promise-breaking and deadline-missing.

If, on Monday, the client was to call me on the phone and say, "Hey, we missed our deadline, and we realize that puts you guys in a tough spot. It will be well nigh impossible to meet the project schedule now, but things can not, unfortunately, be changed. We need you to do whatever you can to make up for the time we have lost. We know you'll do your best," then I would reply with, "No problem. As long as we both understand the situation, I am willing to do everything in my power to help you meet your goals."

But that never happens. Instead, the client pretends they've done nothing wrong. My employer begins to wring its hands over the possibility we might not get paid for the work, because honestly, it's evident to anyone with any clue about anything that we're not going to make the delivery date in the contract.

Suddenly my phone is ringing off its hook. Everyone wants to know what I'm going to do to remedy the situation when, in fact, I am going to do exactly what I was doing before, moving materials from one place to another as soon as they are ready to be moved and keeping everyone up to date on our status. Only now I'm doing it with ten different people looking over my shoulder.

It's unfair, and wait, because I know that you're now thinking again. You're saying to yourself, "yeah, but life is unfair. Suck it up." And here's what I think about that: BULLSHIT. I am tired of people excusing dishonesty and incompetence with a shrug of the shoulders and a pedantic grin. I am unable to keep my head down and keep this broom moving, so we will not be getting along just fine.

I understand that dishonesty and incompetence is the norm, but I don't have to be happy about it.

No. I don't have to be happy about it.

Neither do I have to be happy about the fact that I've gone all self-righteous again, even after promising not to, only a few short paragraphs ago. Perhaps it's just that corporate work is not for the righteous. We, the few, the proud, the self-important, are meant for other things, like the unemployment line or the bar stool, or both.

These are the days that I am thankful to my good and reasonable wife who affords me the luxury of righteousness and the facility of honesty. Sorry again about the pontification. I will return to less impassioned scribblings in future entries.

September 11th, 2003 - I was all set to fill this space today with a brief explication of what I find unacceptable about working in the corporate environment. I'm sure you would all have found it edifying and useful as a tool with which to disect your own lingering misgivings about participating in the American wage labor system, but it will have to wait for another day.

Today is the second anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, and as I drove back from my evening run in the woods with the dog I listened to a piece on NPR's All Things Considered program about the proposed uses of the property at Ground Zero. Apparently folks can't quite agree on what percentage of the redevelopment should be allocated to office space versus the portion allocated as a memorial to those who perished there.

A few of the people they spoke to, people who had worked in the towers, said they just wouldn't feel safe working at the site again, that they'd have to look for jobs elsewhere if their companies rebuilt at Ground Zero. That got me thinking about what's happened in the last two years.

In the immediate aftermath of the attack, there was a tremendous and generous show of sympathy from the world community (sure we still had our detractors, but by-and-large the citizens of planet earth felt we had been wronged). Within our borders a swirl of emotions welled up. We were sad, frightened and angry all at the same time.

Two years on, our European allies are mostly hostile to us (certainly on the streets, if not in the prime ministerial chambers), and our leadership has responded only to the anger of the American populace and not to the feelings of grief and vulnerability.

It is true that we now have the Department of Homeland Security, purpose built to keep us safe from terrorist threats. It is also true that we have toppled the Taliban in Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein in Iraq. We have been busy in the time since the attacks, but have we done anything to improve our standing in the world, to protect ourselves from those who would destroy us?

The Associated Press has reported an estimated 3,240 civilian Iraqi deaths between March 20 and April 20 of this year, but that number was based on figures from just half of all Iraqi hospitals and doesn't include Iraqi military casualties. The actual number is believed, even by conservative international groups, to be significantly higher. In the year after September 11th, according to Time Magazine, the U.S. and its Afghan allies killed at least 5,000 Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters in that country, not to mention the civilian deaths.

So, we lost just over 3,000 innocent lives to a pack of extreme fundamentalists bankrolled by a fabulously wealthy, oil family renegade, and we reacted by killing more than 10,000 people in combat on two middle-eastern fronts stirring up hatred for the red, white and blue among everyday middle-easterners, and also arrousing the ire of some of our closest allies in Europe, Asia and the rest of the world.

Without getting into any of the political and/or religious wrangling that seems to have pulled this whole American project right off its tracks, I have to believe we have failed to cope adequately with the tragedy that befell us that sunny, fall morning. We have answered violence with violence. We have refused the help of those willing to give it. And we have focused on revenge, when healing is really what was wanted.

So two years on, I remain sad for my country, not because there are so many bad people in the world, hell bent on our destruction, but because we seem so out of touch with our own most basic needs, because we fail to see that striking back will only increase the power of those we fear, and most of all because the innocent people who died on airplanes and in office buildings that day only served as tinder for the larger fire that burns in our damaged national consciousness.

September 10th, 2003 - A few days ago, maybe a week, I wrote about the falling of fall, and specifically I mentioned part of my morning commute, the part where the train comes up from the Kendall Square station on its way across the river to the Charles/MGH stop. Because I get on in Davis Square, and because that's the second stop on the Red Line heading into the city, and because I always get on the last car in order to exit the train right by the stairs at the Broadway station across town, I pretty much have my choice of seats every day.

So what I do is step in the door of the car and sit in the very first seat (assuming it's not filled with vomit or urine or some other bodily fluid) facing away from the train platform. Then I bury my head in whatever book I'm reading, looking up at each station only to confirm that a deranged lunatic hasn't boarded the train (This seems like a flippant remark, but you don't ride the train in the morning. You don't know that I'm really quite serious and have, in fact, switched cars half way through a commute in order to escape the presence of a babbling, frothing-at-the-mouth freak who feels compelled to confront his fellow passengers with stark revelations of his own life's failures).

I am making it seem like an unpleasant way to get to work, but it's not really so horrible. I get a fair amount of reading done, and as I was saying before (I looked it up. It was on Sept. 2nd.), there is that moment when the train comes above ground and crosses the Longfellow Bridge. Sitting where I sit I get the view up the Charles towards Newton and Watertown. It's a spectacular sight, taking in most of the lower, rambling part of the Boston skyline as it worms along the river.

I always take special care to look at the air around the buildings first. OK. That sounds strange. But you can tell a lot about the weather and air quality from the way the sky appears at the point of contrast between ether and steel and concrete. It's hard to see haze and humidity with just the clouds as backdrop, but when the urban air is gauzed across the pinnacle of an office tower these things are much easier to pick up. And I like to know what I'm in for in my daily trudge up out of the station, across the Broadway Bridge and under the expressway to the basement office where I make the better part of my living.

After the amateur meteorological survey, I let my eye drift down through the buildings, the grays and browns and blues arranging themselves in geometric patterns that suggest order where really none exists, especially in an older city like Boston. Finally, my eye comes to the Hatchshell and Municipal Boathouse on the Esplanade. From the Longfellow, the Hatchshell looks like a swollen, gray boil on the wrinkley, green skin of the park. The Boathouse with its white dock and small fleet might almost be tropical with its small inlet dotted with trees, tropical, that is, until winter sets in and the boats come out of the water and the snow piles up on the rocky promontories that isolate the lagoon.

That's the last thing I see before we pull into Charles/MGH and all the young nurses get on the train in their blue pyjamas and clogs. They break the spell, and I turn back to my book and start wishing the train would skip Broadway and just keep on going. Really, I could ride like that all day, reading and people watching and occasionally looking out the window to gaze at the skyline. Sometimes I dream about riding the train and writing character sketches of all the interesting passengers, of seeking out the junkies and lunatics, to face my fear of other people.

I just finished reading a collection of travel writing the other day, and in the introduction the editor broaches the idea that the interesting part of travelling is always the part you're most fearful of, that in exploring places and cultures that make you uncomfortable you learn the most about yourself. And I think that's a big part of what I like about the morning train. I have staked out a place and a routine that work for me, but there are still moments of joy and fear that help me establish my relationship to the rest of the world in more concrete terms.

Fall makes me think about these things. It also makes me wonder if I need a sweater.

September 8th, 2003 - My dad called. He wanted to know if I was feeling down.

See, my dad reads this blog, and he notices that I complain a lot and seem confused and directionless on the bigger life issues. As a concerned parent he takes the time to dial my number and see if I'm ok. It's really nice. Really, really, really nice, and I have to say that when I am in fact a little down in the dumps it makes me feel a hell of a lot better knowing that he cares.

Having said all that, two things spring to mind.

First of all, knowing that my father reads my blog creates a situation in which I might be tempted not to write certain sensitive and personal things about myself or my relationship with my parents for fear I might offend him/them in some way. And truth be told, when my mother told me that dad was reading these words pretty regularly I gave it about ten minutes worth of serious thought before it slipped gracefully from the mental docket.

It's like this: Those of you who know me, know I'm just too prone to truth-telling to candy coat my blog for my father or mother (though I get the impression she's not as interested in my self-involved whining). In fact, my inability to keep the things on my mind from spilling out and off my tongue has more or less always been a problem in my working life. Too often I've been brutally honest with a boss or boss's boss and so curried a lack of favor that stalled my upward progress like a sand bag on a hot-air balloon.

Just today a co-worker said to me, "You really will say anything, won't you?"

And the unfortunate answer was. "Yes, and those pants do make your ass look fat."

Moving on to my second and more important point, dad's call helped me understand how I am likely perceived by those of you wasting your time reading these words. See, he read the last couple entries here and assumed I was depressed because I was complaining a lot. The truth is, I just complain a lot. I'm actually feeling pretty good about life.

To be absolutely clear, I AM confused about what I'm doing with my life, and that sparks some fairly serious background anxiety that keeps me from living a life of unfettered joy. But still I have a lot of joy in my life.

For example, tomorrow, September 9th, is my third wedding anniversary, and I will be celebrating by eating a delicious, and likely expensive, meal with the woman who is my best-friend, soul-mate, inspiration and object of not a few of my prurient fantasies. (Does it make you uncomfortable to read these things? Sorry. They are germane (no pun) to the point.)

This evening, after bounding down the steps of the 94 bus from work, I went running in the Fells with the dog in the dying light of late summer. Up rocks and over fallen trees we went, the air cool on my face and through his whiskers. Every now and then he even looked back to make sure I was ok. It was good.

And tomorrow I have the day to myself, to ride my bike and walk in the woods, to do some writing and maybe some laundry, to think about the stuff I want to think about. I am giddy with anticipation. I am, as dad himself used to say, more than "reasonably well."

My father reads my blog, and cares whether or not I'm depressed, and calls to tell me that there's not much going on down his way, but that Seabiscuit is worth seeing, and that tomorrow he's going to wash the car and drive the old ladies at the nursing home to mass or to the library or the mall, and that on Wednesday, when my mom is off work, they won't do much because she's usually tired. And then he lets me go, because he doesn't have much else to say really. But before he hangs up, I tell him I'll try not to be so morose all the time, that I'll try to be a little more inspirational.

I said earlier that I never candy coat what I write here just because I know my father is reading. Even now, I haven't done that. I am generally well and happy, in part BECAUSE my father reads these words (christ, I'm glad someone is reading them).

Oh, and it's never the pants that make your ass look fat. It's the big fat ass that does it. Seriously.

September 6th, 2003 - A strange transformation is taking place. I'm not quite sure what is happening. Maybe if I give you some of the details, you can help me identify the change under way.

The first thing you should know is that I just lowered the needle on an old (is there any other kind?) Leo Kottke record. It's crackling and popping out of the speakers as I type. And it sounds good. It was this or one of Stevie Wonder's Tamla recordings.

Next you should know that I am tired of all the sirens that scream by the house. I mean really tired. More and more my thoughts are interrupted by the high-pitched squawl of the fire truck. Too often my sleep is disrupted by a careless car alarm, set off by the commuter rail that rumbles past two or three dozen times a day.

Traffic is another issue. No one likes traffic, but millions of people seem to tolerate it. Me? I just abandoned a trip to the pet store to get a bag of kibble for Eddie because there was a back up at the rotary by the retail super-plex. Years ago I was a strong proponent of automobiles with manual transmissions. Now I'm an automatic devotee, unless that is I can get a bus or train to take me where I want to go.

Despite saying a few days ago (September 1st to be precise) that our dreams of living a simpler life in the North woods ended with the realization that good pad thai might not be available in Brattleboro. Brittney and I continue to talk about moving to Vermont where the land is cheap, the air is fresh and the quiet is all pervasive. Sure, the hoi polloi of Connecticut and New York tool up I-91 all year long in their SUVs and luxury sedans to whine about the service at local diners. But we can ignore them, can't we? We can eat at home. Shit. I can make pad thai.

You should also know that I wear, unapologetically, Birkenstocks (see August 10th) and fleece in cold weather, and I'm much more interested in walking the Long Trail than the Freedom Trail. In fact I'd offer this to would-be Boston tourists: We have spoiled the quaintness of downtown Boston with car exhaust, litter and a two-foot wide stripe of red paint. You want history? Go to the Bad Lands and see what the last ice age did to that stretch of real estate.

So those are the symptoms, but what is the problem and what is the cure? And don't tell me I'm getting older or that I'm maturing, because the first one is obvious and the second is patently false. If anything I'm regressing. In a way it feels like I'm returning to that time when I was a young child, when the whole world was scary and the smallest discoveries about how life really was for grown-ups left my head spinning in disbelief for weeks.

Any ideas?

September 3rd, 2003 - I was right about the job. Suddenly there are less words, less blog, less soccer article, less short story, less essay, less bad beginnings to first novels, less scribbles and less jots.

AND. IT. IS. BULLSHIT.

I am only supposed to be working three days a week, so how is it that I don't have the time to write? On work days I am up early to walk the dog and wash the armpits. An hour on the bus and train provides me ample reading time, but then I go to the office where I rearrange the papers on my desk and fashion awkward e-mails to clients and co-workers about my inability to perform any of the tasks required of me. Then I train and bus in reverse, usually home by 6pm. But then there's more dog walking and some dinner cooking and don't forget the exercising and wife talking, and before I know it, it's 9pm and I'm sliding into the chair, this chair, to try to empty my brain of whatever ideas remain.

And that's the problem right there. No ideas remain.

I wrote that trying-to-be-cute crap about needing more head space the other day (see August 24th), and though I clearly didn't make anything even close to a point in that entry, what I'm telling you now is that it's not enough to have time to write. You also have to have time to think about what you're going to write. You've got to percolate. You've got to sit and stare and drool. And I just don't have time for that anymore.

Furthermore, the in-between times, like when I'm making my morning tea or when I'm walking somewhere to buy a shitty, over-priced sandwich, are now taken up with thoughts about the papers I need to rearrange and the mea culpa e-mails I've got to tap out back at the office. Since I've been "back at work" there have been exactly zero epiphanies, no progress on the "finding myself" front, no "catching the poignance of an everyday event" events.

So what about the days when I'm not working? The other four days?

That's an excellent question, the answer to which probably involves some bit of self-realization about not being properly disciplined and/or driven to pursue my dream. Speaking of which, most of my dreams are about work now too, and that's not good at all.

Of late, my days away from work (or the office more specifically) have been spent doing laundry and churning out page after page of drech for the soon-to-be-printed Soccer New England College Schedule Guide. So, though it is, technically, writing, it's hardly the high brow lit I've fooled myself into believing I'm capable of. I haven't written anything I'm pleased with in a month. Not a word.

The cliche' artist in me (is there another one?) is tempted to say I'm at a crossroads, that it's time to choose between the day job and the writerly life. Except I'm not at a crossroads. I'm in a rotary, and no one seems to want to yield to let me out of it, so I keep going round and round and round. Wait a minute. There's another cliche' in there somewhere, isn't there?

Anyway, my friend Shawn, who makes a living as the Financial Times' "man in Indonesia" passed on a thought from Jonathan Franzen recently. Apparently the author of The Corrections, a fantastic novel if you haven't read it, thinks a writer has to write a million words before even thinking about any sort of literary success.

Consider this little whine session 600 more on my pile.

September 2nd, 2003 - Sometime in the night, fall fell. The clues were everywhere.

First there was the sock drawer where I stood, hair still shower wet, gazing down at the wool and cotton and lycra blends in all their various cuts and lengths. All summer I chose from the socks on the right, the white ones that go under the sneakers I wear in warm weather to promote the circulation of air between toes and under arches. This morning I pulled a pair from the left side of the drawer, where the dark colors live. These go with the heavier, leather shoes that seemed to make sense this morning, given the light rain and chill in the air.

Then there was the coat rack by the front door. I passed over the bright yellow windbreaker with the gray piping that is light enough to wear in hot summer rains, opting instead for the rubbery black one with the insulating liner.

And so with thick black socks and a black jacket I trudged out the door and up the street to the bus stop to stand next to the other black-socked and black-jacketed commuters. And even though a few brave (or stupid) young women showed up in open-toed shoes, we all looked at each other with puzzled expressions that said, "I never would have guessed." After all, only a week ago we were all turned out in sandals and t-shirts.

Underground, on the train, the seasonal change was less evident. Abandoned newspapers blew down the platform in much the same way they do all year long. The only real, perceptible difference was the somewhat diminished tang of urine in the air. Summer has a tendency to drive fetid aromas out of corners. In cooler weather, the stink just creeps along the floor.

Zipping through the Red Line tunnel from Davis to Porter to Harvard to Central to Kendall the fluorescent lighting and canned air played across my book in much the same way they did last week, but I make a point of sitting just inside the door so that I can, once the train comes above ground and begins to ford the river, glance up from the page to take in the city skyline. From that unique vantage point you can see exactly what kind of day it's going be.

And today Boston was looking decidedly low key in the gray flannel of autumn rain. If the sock drawer and coat rack and bus stop weren't enough, the city's having traded in its yellow sunshine and the shimmery gauze of August humidity for the off-gray of fall was all the convincing I needed.

I suppose I'll pull the fans and air-conditioners from the windows, swap the screens for storms and think about putting down some grass seed in anticipation of the cool and wet. It won't be long before I get that first whiff of wood smoke in the morning breeze.

Sometime in the night fall fell, and I found it in my sock drawer.

September 1st, 2003 - Fresh air does strange things to city folk. Brittney and I have just returned from a long weekend in West Dover, Vermont where our friends Charlie and Nancy have a cozy little log cabin perched on the side of a hill. Since we've been back (actually since we got in the car and crunched up their gravel driveway to go home) all we can talk about is whether or not we could live in a place like that.

Brittney, she likes that you can drink the water straight from the tap, that random garbage doesn't blow up on your front steps and that it's quiet. Me, I'm a sucker for hiking and biking and solitude. You can sit and think in a place like that. In fact, you have to, cause there ain't no cable TV.

And the prospect of a simpler life is always attractive, especially when you feel completely entangled in the complications of your present circumstances, when you're already dreading a return to the office in the morning.

So we've been making mental lists, pro and con, disassociating ourselves from this city life we've been living and squinting toward the future, our eyes shielded from the glare of fiscal exigency, to envision a life with children on the side of a hill in a small house with wood smoke pouring out the top.

Are we crazy? Quite possibly.

Brittney, who grew up in Western Mass, and has always responded to the query, "Ever think about moving back there?" with a subtle but firm, "Hell, no," is now reminiscing about bad public radio and extolling the benefits of growing up on a dirt road. The girl with the shoe fetish and the taste for high-priced cuisine is happy in Birkenstocks contemplating the culinary benificence of an autumn church supper.

And she's not alone.

I, neurotic. Me, the tragic pessimist and cynic. John Emlyn Lewis. The guy who will tell you he escaped the brutal ignorance and homogeneity of the Heart of Dixie to find a million kindred spirits walking up and down Commonwealth Avenue in Boston. I too am thinking that Green Acres might be the place for me.

Maybe we're just getting older. Maybe we're not up to the urban shuffle anymore. The traffic is maddening. The litter is criminal. The noise seems to grow louder by the minute. And we don't even live in the city proper. We're six miles from downtown in a single family house on a corner lot. By city standards we're on an estate.

Fortunately I can tell that sanity is reestablishing itself in our shared domestic consciousness. Holding hands this evening as we ambled down the red-bricked sidewalk, twin bags of Thai takeout banging against our legs, contemplating a potential move woodward, Brittney said, "I can see it happening, but not for a while. Not for at least five or six years." I nodded my assent. We need to sock away a little more money, make a plan, know what we're doing. We're not pick-up-and-move people. We're pick-up-the-phone-and-order-some-pad-thai people.

And just like that the topic petered out, as if we had exhaled the last wisps of mountain air from our urban lungs and thereby returned home. I even honked at a cab on the drive back to the house.

These people really need to figure out what "Yield to Traffic in Rotary" means...

August 24th, 2003 - OK. The biggest chunk of work is behind me now. There are details still to be dealt with, but the Suez is dug, the Hoover is dammed, the stone rests at the top of the hill, if you know what I'm saying. I feel I have my brain back at last.

And though I've spent the better part of the last two weeks complaining about the time lost to work, work and more work, it occurred to me this morning that it's not really time. It's space. Head space.

I was driving down Mystic Avenue, the stretch of retail wasteland that ribbons along the highway just a mile or so from our house. They've got one of those big, new storage facilities there, the ones where you rent a windowless locker to keep junk that's so close to being garbage you don't even want to keep it at your house anymore. Sometimes they find bodies hidden in these off-site closets. Mostly they don't find anything but boxes of old papers and sporting goods though.

Anyway, I see a lot of these places. There are at least three of them within five minutes of here, and I find them curious, if only because I've never felt even the remotest need to have one. I mean, if you don't have room for something at your house or you can't afford to ship it to where you're going in the event you're travelling, there's a pretty good chance you should just sell it and/or throw it out, no?

What I want is to rent a mental storage facility, to bolster my head space for those times (like the one I'm exiting now) when there's too much to keep track of, too much information to process. People complain about there not being enough hours in the day, but another way to think of it is: I can't do enough things simultaneously.

For example, I can't run the project at the publishing company I'm at three days a week, put out a 70 page magazine, take care of the dog, do the grocery shopping, keep up with whatever novel(s) I'm reading, maintain this blog, exercise and eat regularly without something giving way. I have time to do all these things, but not the mental energy, not the force of will or intellectual focus, to make it all happen.

I can run and think at the same time, but the publishing project and the magazine invariably push any thoughtfulness that might become an entry in this blog right out my ear, dribbling down my neck to pool in the little recess my collar bone makes with my shoulder. I can read on the train on the way to the office, but then none of the other things on the mental agenda are being addressed. Sometimes I almost miss my stop, such is the effort I expend on even the simplest prose.

So if I could get another cranial compartment, even a tin one with a deadbolt on it, I could get more done. I could drop work off there on the way home and spend the evening concocting clever essays about the state of the world to sell to magazines that publish that sort of thing. Maybe then I wouldn't have to push paper for an academic publisher in a basement next to a homeless shelter.

Do you think Christo feels this way? Do you thing he says, "Oh, the things I could do, if only I had the space..." Probably not.

More head space, that's what I need. Now that the magazine is more or less done, I have some back. I cleared a corner of the old noggin out and burnt the refuse in a small pile of leaves out in the yard. A nice, sterile facility set up for storage would be better though, someplace stuck on the outskirts of the sprawl where the rent is cheap.

I suppose, in a way, that's what computers are. You type things in, and they remember them. Sometimes they even work on the things you type in while you're up getting something to eat or peeing. But it's not enough. Computers are good at remembering details, but they're terrible at taking responsibility for things, for projects or ideas or even the dog. And responsibility takes up a lot of head space.

Maybe I'll make a million dollars renting mental storage units to overtaxed yuppies. Instead of anonymous sheds with rolling metal gates on them, they'll look like big jars of mint green jelly, shimmering with quasi-cerebral activity. You'll drop off the plans for your wedding, come back a month later, and the band will be hired and the invitations will be addressed and mailed. You'll lift the lid and stick your hand in the goo and a synchronization will take place. I'll have baby wipes handy so you can clean up afterwards.

Oh, and because you'll want to use your extra head space fairly often, and since a jar of jelly takes up far less space than a locker full of ancient tax returns, I'll put my business next to the train station so you can get your coffee and your donut, pick up a paper and off-load some responsibility on the way to the urine-stinky subway.

Better yet, just don't take on so much. You don't really need more head space. You just need to throw out all the mental crap that's been accumulating, or sell off the more useful bits in a yard sale on a Saturday morning. For example, I've got this idea about offloading responsibility in jars of mint jelly.

You could have it for as little as five cents. I'll even throw in a baby wipe.

August 22nd, 2003 - I am loathe to waste vital keyboard time outlining my political beliefs, none of which you're particularly interested in anyway, and this week, as I mentioned in my previous entry, I really shouldn't be typing anything other than the work I'm being paid for.

BUT...

I just have to say that this whole thing down in Alabama, where the chief justice of the state supreme court, Roy Moore, is making a big whooping stink over the statue of the ten commandments he personally had installed in the supreme court building, makes me wonder why we didn't let those idiots secede when could have.

A federal judge has ordered the monument removed, but Moore says it has to stay as a symbol of our law's origins in the moral code of the bible. His supporters are camped on the steps of the court building to prevent authorities from removing it. The state is being fined $5,000 for everyday it remains.

Now, some of you might be aware that I am from Alabama, that I spent my 'formative years' there, whatever that means. So perhaps I'm just that little bit more sensitive about the denizens of my former home making the place look like a giant, pine-forrested loony bin. It's bad enough that people joke about me being married to my cousin when I mention my roots. It's bad enough that they ask if I can read. Everyone suffers a little with this kind of crap. Ask your friends from New Jersey.

But then some jackass like Roy Moore goes and proves that people from Alabama are clueless, redneck, religious zealots. Does the man not understand the basic premises this country was built upon, small things like the separation of church and state?

To be absolutley clear, I have no problem at all with Christianity (ok, I have some small problems, but they're mine not yours and not worth talking about). If you want to carve a tribute to the ten commandments into a giant hunk of granite, go right ahead. Put it in your yard. Put it in your church. Heck, put it in the mall if you're willing to rent the space. BUT DON'T PUT IT IN THE SUPREME COURT BUILDING!!!!!!!!!

What message does it send to the muslims and hindus and taoists and zoroastrians who we share this great land of ours with? That we think it's ok for our religion to stand in judgement over theirs? Note: We don't even have a religion. We are religionless. Or rather, we don't espouse one faith, but pride ourselves on allowing each person to find the faith that's right for them. That Roy Moore doesn't understand that has to make you wonder how he got to be chief justice of the Alabama supreme court (all lowercases intentional, thanks) in the first place.

Supreme court justices shouldn't even be talking about god in anything other than a theoretical way. Frankly, I hope they not only remove the monument, but also find a way to kick this jackass off the bench. Then I hope they deport him to a country where his bible thumping bullshit lands him in a small cell with a hundred other guys all scraping the dirt floor with sandalled toes wondering what in the hell they did to deserve such rough treatment. Maybe then he'll understand why religion has no place in government, and government has no place in religion.

Maybe then Alabama won't be the punchline in every joke you ever heard about morons. But probably not.

August 19th, 2003 - Don't bother looking here for my random blatherings. There won't be any for a while. I'm too busy.

I believe I mentioned last week that I was over-extended. I have agreed to do more work this month than I am capable of doing. I have commited the sin of over-promise/under-deliver. For those of you who haven't heard this phrase bandied about in the corridors of anonymous office buildings used for the production of mediocre software, ask someone who has. It means I goofed.

So for the next week at least, I will be a monk. I will drive myself to ascetic extremes in the pursuit of maximum output. I will outsource non-core business functions like ass scratching and dog petting. Plenty of the people who once babbled away in corporate-speak in the aforementioned office blocks are out of jobs, so that shouldn't be such a problem.

Don't worry. I'll be back to not amuse you and not wow you with deep thoughts and perceptive comments once I'm done not really doing any of the jobs I'm currently involved with very well.

Oh yeah, and I'm doing it for the money, just in case you were wondering. Any traces of workaholism that might have been coursing through these veins when I was a twenty-something yuppie on the software rise have been replaced by nearly lethal levels of laziness and lethargy. I'm more charming this way, believe me.

So au revoir until next week when I'll tell you all about everything you never wanted to know about me and then some...like who I got to scratch my ass while I was busy whoring myself out to the highest bidder.

August 17th, 2003 - The other night I was going to my friend Greg's for dinner, the catch being that I hadn't seen Greg in about ten years and didn't know where he lived. I left the directions and phone number on the kitchen counter as is my custom, and none of the streets in the general area had street signs, which is the way it's done (or not done, I guess) here in Boston.

Understandably, I was having some difficulty finding the right place. Never one to panic (ok, always one to panic), I parked the truck, and set out on foot, figuring someone could tell me where to find Hamilton Road and its intersection with Thorndike.

As it turns out they couldn't.

I asked a couple of young women who mostly laughed at me before walking off, and then a young African-American kid who said he had no idea. So there I was traipsing up and down the streets of Brookline with a bottle of red wine under my arm and a clueless expression on my face. I thought it was fairly charming, but mostly people think you're an axe murderer when you approach them on the street. Really, they do.

Finally, I asked a woman coming out of an apartment if she knew where Hamilton Road was, and the most amazing thing happened. She said she didn't know, but that I was welcome to come inside and use her computer to find out.

I said, "Sure. If you don't mind," which I expected to be followed by, "well, maybe it isn't such a good idea," but then she turned and pressed one of the doorbells beneath the bank of mailboxes by the front door. When her husband came out I thought I'd get a pair of raised eyebrows and a frown, but the guy smiled and beckoned me inside while his wife explained what I was after.

Through the apartment we strolled, over lovingly refinished hard wood floors and past well-framed prints of original art, into their office at the back. After apologizing for the slowness of their computer, the guy promptly located Hamilton Road on a map and we discerned that I was only about two blocks away. I thanked him profusely and apologized for not having another bottle of wine to leave behind, then tripped back down the stairs and out onto the street for the short jaunt to Greg's.

Even as I located the right building and pressed the buzzer to alert Greg to my late presence I still couldn't get over what had happened, a random and magical moment of courtesy and kindness. I would have been dumbfounded if I hadn't started off fairly dumb to begin with.

It reminded me of the kindness of Sary Wilson to the Joad family in Grapes of Wrath, except my grandpa didn't die in a tent by the side of the road. I was just headed over to an old friend's house for dinner. Still, I think the analogy applies. Just when you're ready to give up on the human race, someone gives you something you need without there being anything in it for them.

Of course, if that analogy holds I will end up penniless and flooded out of the old box car I've been calling home for the better part of a month, holed up in an abandoned barn with what remains of my family not knowing what we'll eat for dinner or where we'll get food tomorrow.

I guess great literature can only teach us so much, huh?

August 14th, 2003 - I am overextended. I am getting up to walk the dog, hopping the train, working at an office for four or five hours, coming home, writing magazine pieces, wolfing some dinner and going back to the keyboard, this keyboard. There has been a convergence. This month's Soccer New England will be 68 pages, our biggest issue ever. I am writing more than half of it. It has to be done in two weeks. I have written four pages. Socially, I am committed to two dinners and a launch party this week. At the weekend I have a playoff game to cover. There are calls to make, pieces to write, pages to move, words to edit. And the dog to walk. And walk. And walk.

If I were a joint, an elbow for example, I would be hyper-extended. I would be achey and tender. I would be iced and compressed and elevated, then rested and heated. I might be splinted or braced. It's good, even in the absence of an injury, to be splinted and braced sometimes. I'm bracing for my deadlines, even as I write this.

If I were a creditor I would be bankrupt. The Asian financial crisis of the last decade started just this way. Too many overextended lendors. Too much bad paper. If I were a bank I would cause the collapse of a series of other banks. Good and honest people would be losing their money with me. Good and honest people always seem to lose their money, don't they?

If I were a drug addict I would be trembling, maybe having seizures, foaming at the mouth, perhaps committing crimes to get money to get my habit back under control. I might be detoxing in a jail cell or crashing on an enabling relative's couch, stealing their VCR and trading it for a hit of something to get me back on the right track. Just a taste. When you need something badly enough, just a taste seems like it will do. It never does.

If I were a tape measure I would be cracking and flopping all over the floor. It's hard to get a good measurement with a tape that's not stiff enough to handle maximum extension. When your tape cracks there's a good chance you need another person to help you, someone to hold one end while you hold the other. Sometimes the tape just isn't long enough though. In this case, you need six-feet, but I'm only 5' 9". You'll be mad when the couch doesn't fit. Sorry.

Fortunately, I'm not any of those things. I'm a writer. Overextended writers have to write in the interstices between crappy day jobs and domestic responsibilities, to scribble on the train, type on the way to the shower. That's what I'm doing right now. I have sacrificed shaving and washing my left armpit in order to find the time to blog today. It's not so bad. Not at all.

August 11th, 2003 - Today, evidently, was "Couples Argue on the Train Day." I must have missed the memo. Perhaps I should have known the T was off limits today from the overwhelming stench of fresh urine that slapped me fully across both cheeks as I stepped onto the Red Line at Broadway. Christ Almighty! It was as if some giant dog had marked the car as his or her own, though I've never known canine whiz to be this acrid. No, this was the work of a human being, a really inconsiderate and quite possibly incontinent human being.

Pushing through the stink to find a seat by the door (I like to position myself for quick escapes) I immediately buried my nose in a book hoping to supplant the literal sensory input coming my way with the not-so-literal-but-rather-literary input on the page in front of me.

That's when it started.

Just across from me sat a dissheveled, middle-aged couple, each with a strollered baby perched in front of them. The babies were dirty and looked like twins. The woman, prematurely gray, wore an expression of familiar embarrasment, and her partner, whose hair style might best be described as 'greasy mop,' harrangued her with a littany of complaints, both endless and profane. I couldn't really make out what he was saying, but every other sentence was puncuated with a 'fuck' or a 'goddamnit.'

Still, the words on the page might have crowded this sad pair from my mind if it weren't for the fact that every minute or so the guy would reach across and smack the woman on the arm to get her attention. She was doing her best to ignore him, presumably in hope that he might stop talking, but he didn't like being ignored, so he was smacking her and saying, "Are you listening to me? Are you listening to me?"

Now the contact he was making with her arm didn't really seem to me to constitute physical abuse as much as serious irritation. I felt sorry for her. I also suspected he might intensify the blows if she went on ignoring him, so I worried that I might have to get in the middle of a domestic situation that seemed, at best, pathetic, and at worse abusive.

If you've been in this situation before you know how the thoughts run. You don't want to get involved, but you feel you might have to, and so your brain see-saws back and forth between the two options, all the while praying, albeit in a secular way, that nothing happens.

Suffice it to say I was unable to read and was more than a little thankful when the Bickersons got up, poised their strollers by the door and exited the train in Central Square. I rode in peace to Davis, where I pick up the bus for the final leg of the commute.

That's where I noticed a woman crying just in front of me on the escalator up to street level. She was young and had a thick, silver nose ring and the source of her anguish wasn't immediately apparent. Until, that is, a young guy in shorts and a tank top pushed past me and began saying things to her, which although inaudible, were clearly delivered in a tone that was simultaneously cutting and cruel.

She half whined, half howled, "Fuck," and wiped tears from her cheeks as the moving stairs spilled us out into daylight. Again, I was thankful when the two of them toddled off in the opposite direction as I went to wait for my bus.

But moments later they appeared around the corner, her stumbling along with a cigarette in her mouth, asking people for a light, and him traipsing along behind after her giving further voice to his cruelty. She might have been drunk. I was still trying not to notice.

And luck of all luck, when the 94 bus wheeled into the station, its door flopping open with a hiss, the two of them were right behind me in line to get on. And even though I deliberately chose a seat that I felt would provide maximum distance from them, they somehow managed to squeeze in three seats away and continue their disagreement.

By now I had given up on my book and tried hard to stare out the window while the girl blubbered away and the guy kept at her in a low mumble. Wouldn't you know they got off the bus at the stop before mine and I could see clearly now that she was drunk and he was berating her as they moved off down the sidewalk. Bounding down the steps a minute later, I tossed a quick thanks over my shoulder to the driver, walked quickly up my own street, wiggled a key into the lock and shut the front door behind me in relief.

What is it that inspires people to argue in public, where they make asses of themselves and cause the rest of us to squirm uncomfortably in our seats? Where are you in life when you lose all self-awareness and consideration for others?

I suppose the simple answer is: On a urine soaked subway car, screeching through the bowels of the city.

Tomorrow maybe I'll ride my bike.

August 10th, 2003 - This weekend I went to New York City to see my friends Shawn and Rachel who are in the country for a few weeks. Normally, they live in Jakarta where Shawn is the Indonesian correspondent for the Financial Times and Rachel is a photographer selling work to various and sundry news organizations including some really, very good ones. I don't deserve them as friends, and they don't deserve me, though in quite opposite ways.

The occasion of their visit drew our close mutual friends Brian and Diana up from the hinterlands of New Jersey, as well as a few other acquaintances and characters from times past. It was a regular little reunion of college chums, ten years removed from our escape from the dour and oppressive halls of academia to the soul-rending crush of adulthood. I'm being dramatic of course. My soul has neither been rent, nor have I actually been crushed by adulthood, though I fear being crushed and rent all the time. It is what it is.

Anyway, there we were in the East Village with cold drinks in front of us, sifting through the compromises that career advancement and a heightened sense of responsibility bring, when, for some reason, I mentioned that I own a pair of Birkenstocks.

Jaws dropped.

"You're kidding me, right?" someone said.

"Tell me you don't really wear Birkenstocks," someone else chimed in.

I do. I do wear Birkenstocks, and I couldn't believe that the arrayed company was so aghast. They had, after all, purchased homes, put on ties, done things to please their parents. They had compromised. If I had tainted myself with hippie dippie footwear, surely it was a tiny sin on the docket of the court of life, no?

No. Apparently not.

And so, though I feel no great need to defend my sandalled position, nor any hope that I will ever be anything anyone thinks of as 'cool' ever again, I offer you:

MY DEFENSE OF THE CHOICE TO WEAR BIRKENSTOCKS: In Brief, Submitted this Tenth Day of August in the Year of our Lord Two-Thousand-and-Three.

First point: My wife wears Birkenstocks and always has. She thinks they look good on me, and encouraged me to get a pair. As I have no reasonable chance of having sexual intercourse with any other female inhabitant of this planet while I am married to her, I think it is a more than sound sartorial strategy to wear things that she finds appealing.

Second point: Hippies aren't all stupid and annoying. Sure they listen to some bad music. And yes, they do often spout hideously boring spiritual mumbo-jumbo. But I, for one, am willing to give peace a chance. I would, in nearly every case, prefer making love rather than bombs. And really, if the religious right and Deadhead nation were to pick teams for a national kickball showdown, I'd want to be picked by the guy in the tie-dye and the pony tail, rather than wind up kicking cleanup behind Newt Gingrich or Ann Coulter. Nes pas?

Third point: Having my personal style criticized by people who regularly ask themselves, "Is that a stain or part of the pattern?" while sifting through polyester shirts at the Salvation Army, is hardly the inspiration it will take to have me shed the one pair of shoes it's comfortable to wear when the relative humidity has turned the city into a dirty, smelly sweat lodge.

Fourth point: Though, "they're comfortable" didn't somehow serve as adequate defense as I sat at the dinner table. They really are pretty fucking comfortable, and if, as I stated above, I no longer imagine myself as particularly cool, what is the actual harm in being comfortable?

Fifth point: It is true that when we met, we fancied ourselves quite the gaggle of young punks and that Salvation Army clothes and a lack of musical talent were worn more like badges of courage rather than as what they were, the best we could manage. But for crying out loud, I've realized since then that I was (and probably am) completely full of crap. Isn't it time to move on?

Sixth and final point: Yes. You are right. I look stupid in my black-strapped sandals. I look like a guy who thinks chicken caesar salad is a really yummy thing to have for lunch. I look like a German tourist, like an ageing stoner likely to lecture you on the evils of not recycling that plastic yogurt cup. I am, in a word, uncool.

Are you happy? Do you feel better? I am only trying to sit here, in this restaurant, in this city, with condensation running down the side of this glass, affecting a posture that doesn't scream, I AM GETTING OLDER AND COMPROMISING EVERYTHING I ONCE BELIEVED IN. I HAVE LOST THE CONNECTION BETWEEN THE BIG POINTS OF LEFT-LEANING ARTSY-FARTSYNESS THAT WE ALL ONCE HELD TO BE SACROSANCT AND THE SMALLER DETAILS CONCERNING PROPER FOOTWEAR.

And if you, my old and dear friends, could just for a minute let me be who I was ten years ago, you would see that I am still ok, though I'm not as angry or as hateful as I was then and I'm really much easier to be around and no, I don't look great, but boy my feet sure do hurt a whole lot less and when you spend so much time worried about the likelihood of being squashed by the loathsome responsibilities of a day job and a mortgage, happy feet are something you really, really, really like to have.

Really.

August 6th, 2003 - Here's what happened this morning. The canine alarm clock went off at roughly 6:30am (for a full explanation of how the canine alarm clock works see this blog, July 22nd). I engaged the snooze button and rolled back into the sack, only to fade in and out of my morning stupor for another fifteen minutes.

Finally, as I lay there calculating the time it would take me to get out of bed, get the dog walked, shower up, eat something and begin the long slow slog to work, I gave up on sleeping and hoisted myself upright. This, a full quarter of an hour before the alarm clicked on to some NPR personality begging me for cash I don't have.

From the small pile of clothing on the floor next to the bed I assembled an ensemble worthy of dog walking and went downstairs to harness the beast for his daily trot. He, of course, was excited as hell to see me and made this fact known by licking my knee and rubbing up against my legs in a frenetic back and forth weave, finally presenting his ass for a scratch and a slap. With only a minor struggle I got his collar buckled and grabbed the leash and a plastic, feces-retrieval bag and headed out the door.

Now, in those first few minutes of consciousness I like to think I'm something of a blank canvas. Presented with this fresh canvas, the day is at its leisure to paint my mood as it sees fit. This morning the day chose to load its first clean brush with a dark, brooding and impatient color best described as off-black.

The dog, his normal cheerful and dog-like self, got the first real eyeful of the day's artistic work as I yanked him down the sidewalk while he tried in vain to pee in the neighbor's bushes. It should be made clear that I was not denying him the chance to empty his bladder, something he can do in our yard in his ample time there, mostly spent patrolling its perimeter. What I was actually doing was keeping him from marking, from claiming this bush and that tree for his own, a practice he holds to despite the fact that he can't possibly defend his ownership rights from behind our six-foot privacy fence.

So I spent most of the walk wrestling with the dog, which was stupid because the dog was just being himself and it was me that was being difficult. I mean, what do I care if he pisses on someone's bush? It's not like they're gonna bust outta their front door and eat breakfast off it. They're there for pissing on.

By the time we walked back up the driveway I had a better handle on myself and couldn't help thinking that this bodes ill for my future offspring. The thing with kids is you have to react to their behaviour, not your own, right? Too much thinking. On to the shower.

Actually, before the shower is the toilet. You didn't ask, and normally I wouldn't tell, but in this case there's a reason. My mood was stablizing rapidly under the influence of one Andrei Codrescu (see this blog, June 24th) whose words I always enjoy during my morning constitutional. And I was beginning to think the day might not be so bad. I did what I had to do and then rose to get in the shower, but paused to light a candle in deference to my dainty and feminine wife who follows me in the bathroom and doesn't care for what lingers once I've gone.

Just then, as I struck the match, a little bit of sulphur caught on the end of my finger and stayed there, burning hot and causing the flesh to bubble up. OWWWWW! Fortunately I was able to tap some hidden reserve of self-restraint and avoided breaking a toe by kicking the porcelain of the tub in anger. Boy, did that hurt though.

In fact it still sort of hurts as I tippity-tap out these words. But you can't do without the middle finger on your right hand when you're typing. Otherw se your sentences loo l e th s. And we can't have that.

The shower and the dressing parts of the morning went off without a hitch and the commute was mostly painless, thanks primarily to John Steinbeck who has me so enthralled with The Grapes of Wrath that I almost forgot to get off the train at Broadway, which, come to think of it, might not have been such a bad thing. Out of the station and over the bridge I walked, and all indications were that I was free and clear of any lingering bad mood.

Until I walked under the South East Expressway. The torn up sidewalk that runs through this section of the Big Dig is never the nice part of my morning journey, but this particular morning the sixty feet of pavement that spills out onto Albany Street held a special charm.

Just as I was halfway across, a little shower of concrete bits dropped on my head. I looked up and saw a construction worker going at the underside of the raised roadway with a pneumatic hammer. Sand and dust filled my eyes and I scurried away to keep from getting brained by a larger chunk of falling interstate.

Now I'm irritated and in my head I'm berating the project foreman and the mayor of the city and the governor and doing whatever it takes to revoke every construction permit in the metro-Boston area. I've almost got myself convinced to turn around and head back to the train station, but I shuffle on up the sidewalk, past the homeless shelter to the not-so-cozy confines of the basement office I work in.

And once I arrive it's all wiped clean.

Someone has brought donuts. And I have one. I have the lemon frosted one that I saw at the Dunkin' Donuts near my house last week but was too frightened to try. And it's not nearly as disgusting as it might sound, though I can see how you would say the frosting's unnatural lemon color is pretty off-putting. But really, isn't everything colored to look like the flavor it's trying to mimic. And just because a flavor isn't entirely natural, doesn't mean it's not entirely delicious. Case in point: Doritos. What the hell is nacho cheese supposed to taste like anyway? Have you ever seen nacho cheese for sale at the cheese shop?

Getting back to the story though, donuts fix everything, and except for the moment at lunchtime when I pulled my Cream of Potato soup out of the microwave a little too late and suffered the ignominy of having it pop and splatter all over my face, everything has been just fine. No one was there to see it happen, so I just wiped my face (and a good portion of my hair) with a paper towel and went about my business.

That's what happened this morning.

August 5th, 2003 - It's not so much hot as wet. The doors are swollen in their jambs. The toilets are sweating, and the banisters feel like they're covered in moss. My hair is the ocean with waves and spray and strange vegetation growing in it. The street is a symphony of rattling air conditioners raining condensation down the sides of their houses, and the deli around the corner is permanently fogged in.

Laundry goes sour. Potato chips, left open, get chewy. And the carpet leaves your feet wet when you walk across it.

The puddles in the road from the intermittent rain stand; they don't dry or run off into clogged gutters. It's gray and gloomy all day. This is the summer?

These are the days when we don't sweat; we bubble. The perspiration comes to the surface, pools and runs. Down forearms and the backs of calves. Foreheads shine.

This is the humidity I try to tell people about, the hotness and wetness that I grew up with in Alabama, where it rains everyday but never cools down. The drops come down big and warm like candle wax, only to steam up off the pavement for the rest of the day.

Southerners don't take their time because they're laid back. No. The south runs two speeds slower than everywhere else because it's too damn uncomfortable to move any faster. Ceiling fans spin and ice melts in too-sweet tea, but they're no match for this weather.

What this weather calls for is sitting still. The governor should come on the television and announce a week-long break in general activity. Rocking chairs may rock, but work must not be done. It will be good to pause for a minute, if only to avoid heat stroke.

Let's take a page from the reptiles and crawl under our rocks until the heat lets up. Let's all be cool marble statues for a week. Eyeballs may scan pages, but work sentences must be commuted, to say nothing of the sweltering exhaust of the morning commute. Road travel should be prohibited. Aren't we all too exhausted to breathe any more exhaust?

I know I am.

August 4th, 2003 - I can't fix everything, despite a natural, an almost pathological, inclination to try. For example, my truck needs new shocks and struts. I can't replace them myself. I'm not even really sure what a strut is or what it does. But I think about shocks and struts whenever I bounce over a speedbump, whenever I think of se