-- Friday, July 23, 1999 --

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12:28 a.m. Yup, a.m. I am up. I am determined to try to get ahead of this rock I'm pushing up the hill ... and I've also promised my beloved Igor that tomorrow (which is technically today) we would try to go sailing. If we can get out on a weekday, so the current thinking goes, there's less chance of banging into another boat and sinking. Plus, the bruise on my leg from two weekends ago, when both sides of my knee where my leg got caught between the rudder thing, and the seat -- or is it the steering stick? -- there's a term for everything in sailing, and if I didn't feel so silly, I too, would yell out "avast, alee, Matey!" merrily ... well, the bruises are almost healed. Just the palest yellow and pink now, with little dots and dashes of blue and purple still making a faint parenthesis around my knee.

And I know there are people reading this. I just know it. My little counting do-hickey on the bottom of the page seems to be working, although I still have my doubts about the email button. And I'm aware that when I open my eyes to a new day, stretching blissfully at 9:15 a.m. and look out the window at the nosegay flowers waving in the breezes, in the lovely sunlight, I know that it's already past noon in the east, and that my "today, yesterday, tomorrow" buttons have become obsolete in the night. I must remedy this, but how? I want to be honest here. That's the basic point of this. But, how?

Who is every really honest? The truth keeps moving sideways, tripping up the best of intentions. The window in the picture existed for the briefest of time, and then the room around it changed. Down came the curtain, up went the wallpaper, and eventually, we moved. Down came the wallpaper, back up went the Levelors, and now -- just the photo. Just the memory. It's a venial truth, at best.

Boy, did I take abuse for that wallpaper, which I still think is quite the thing. You can see it, opposite, behind the pretty little rose in the specimen jar. It's old-fashioned looking, but brand-new from the Home Despot. Does that make it dishonest? A little? It cost many dollars a roll, and it was supposed to be strippable, so when the two young women who were moving in after us finished going on and on about how really awful it was, I carefully rolled each and every strip back up and scraped and sponged off the residue that was not supposed to be left on the wall. The wallpaper makers fibbed a little on their advertising; only a little.

It was one of the most enjoyable jobs I've had in a long while because I was able to plug in the radio in the empty room and pretend I had nothing better to do than climb up and down and scrub and listen to the entire impeachment proceedings, blow by blow, scrape by scrape, taking out my anger and frustrations on the ladder in that formerly quiet bedroom as the lies and hypocrisy of our elected officials bounced off the sticky walls.

And so we've moved and the radio is silent beside my desk and that room is now the pure white of the little lie.

The beauty of it is in the details. The homey little verities. The truth is right here, in the dark house all around me as I type about the sunny morning. I wonder each day about how to describe this world in a way that matters. Should I list the disappointments or the triumphs? Talk about the dirty laundry piling up or take pictures of the perfect rose? Did I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?

Did I not promise to go sailing today? But what is today, really?

Tomorrow -- true story.