Friday, July 14, 2000

11:58 p.m. Computer crashes R Us. I've been having a lot of them lately. Makes you look over your shoulder in paranoid anguish ... and this last time I had half an entry written, which I've laboriously copied out by hand as the machine froze up and mocked me. No Big Brother either, I swear.

I was trying to get the entry finished as quickly as possibly so that I could put a cap on this week and declare it: Over! But it is not to be. It has been a very hard, very pressing, very intense week and I can't wait to have a fair reason to recreate tomorrow. Mini break. Mini vacation. It will be Saturday.

I'm going to sleep in -- and I'm (maybe) going to turn over and try to go back to sleep no matter what powerful thoughts wake me up at whatever ungodly hour. I'm not going to give in -- I'm going to try to drift. Work will wait. It really will.

We've just come back from an indulgent dinner at our favorite local restaurant. It's a place I'd like to eat at many, if not most days of the week, if I thought we could afford it. It is, in my humble opinion, what makes Venice special. It is perfection and exquisite and fabulous when it comes to food and decor, but it doesn't care. It doesn't try to impress you.

It's not the most expensive place in town. The people who come to eat there are not so painfully arch and tied so taunt on their bones that they vibrate with anxiety. There is the occasional relaxed moment. I've overheard people laugh, rather than twitter. I've seen cabana wear, worn seriously.

But I josh. (And I'm saving every second sentence in case I crash again before I can literally flee from my desk and race upstairs with my shoes in hand and throw all my clothes on the floor and fall, face down upon the pillows. I will sleep the sleep of the just and righteous this night.

There's no fight I haven't fought this week -- and I've won a couple and I've lost most of them. I could hate young people this week. I really could. They are too stupid to even know that they are stupid; they are too illiterate to know how much they don't know. They think they rule the world and sometimes I think they're right.

I could hate, but I won't do it. It's vinegar and acid that I don't need in my system. It's a mean streak I'd rather not paint. The youngest, most powerful and most obnoxious among us will wake up tomorrow a day older, and a day older after that. There's only one road we're all traveling along. They're scared, too. They make mistakes. I've got to stop looking in the rear view.

Again, I wrench the subject around.

Generalizing is wrong, and I'm grateful for the five-syllable words that keep the riff-raff from understanding what I'm really saying here. If I could find one of the somber nuns who taught me grammar, I'd give her a big kiss on the cheek right now. We -- we, who understand dissonance -- we rule.

In our dreams.

I had berries for desert. I had halibut for dinner. Who could complain about that? The other night I had -- wait until you hear this: beautiful creamy mashed potatoes piped around a piece of fish and flavored with wasabi. Pale, pale green and slightly tangy with a bite. A real bite.

Young, green wasabi. Doughty old-fashioned mashed potatoes. The combination works.